Elderly at Risk in Extreme Cold

The extreme temperatures and snow of winter can be particularly dangerous for older adults. The elderly and those with heart disease are at special risk, according to the American Heart Association.

As people age, their ability to maintain a normal internal body temperature often decreases. Because elderly people seem to be relatively insensitive to moderately cold conditions, they can suffer hypothermia without knowing they're in danger, the Heart Association reports (http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4570).

Hypothermia means the body temperature has fallen below normal. It occurs when your body can't produce enough energy to keep the internal body temperature warm enough and the condition can kill. Heart failure causes most deaths in hypothermia, the American Heart Association notes. 

 The following tips, from the local Home Instead Senior Care^® office, will help you safeguard a senior loved one or neighbor.

• Fill the cupboard. Help your senior stock the staples and groceries they’ll need in the event of a large snowstorm or cold spell.
• Maximize energy. Encourage your senior to make sure they have adequate insulation and to check and clean the fireplace and furnace. Replace furnace filters monthly.
• Minimize drafts. Help your senior fill old socks with sand and use them in drafty windowsills and door jams. Weather-strip around windows and doors. Keep doors closed to unused rooms and close curtains at night.
• Stay toasty. Advise your senior to add an extra blanket to the bed and warm the bed in advance with a hot water bottle. Never use electric blankets.  A senior may not be able to operate the controls if the temperature needs to be adjusted in the night.
• Dress warmly. A senior’s circulation decreases with age. Encourage your senior to wear an extra sweater or sweatshirt, and sweat pants during the winter.
• Monitor the thermostat. Check with your senior to make sure that they’re keeping the thermostat above 65 degrees during the cold weather. Older adults are particularly susceptible to hypothermia, which can develop over a few days and weeks even in the mildly cool indoor temperatures of 60 to 65 degrees.
• Beware of budget problems. Make sure your senior isn’t trying to save money by keeping the thermostat down. Many communities have energy assistance programs for low- and fixed-income households.

• Avoid slips. Make sure your senior has made arrangements to have driveways and walkways cleaned. Salt and sand should be available to speed melting.
• Stay in touch. Check on your neighbor or loved one frequently during periods of cold and snowy weather.
• Build a network. You can’t always be around to help your elderly loved one. Call on neighbors, family and church members to help.

For more information about the cold, visit the National Weather Service Web site at http://www.noaa.gov and the Federal Emergency Management Agency Web site at www.fema.gov. Or, to learn more about Home Instead Senior Care, log on to www.HomeInstead.com/nepa.

A Day in the Life of a Caregiver

Meet Reta
Reta lives in a small, 24-bed home specifically dedicated for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. She has lived there for four years. The home caters to individuals in the first and second stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Reta’s disease has progressed to Alzheimer’s stage three.

A Need for More Care
“The need for extra care became very evident when some challenging behaviors developed,” explained Sharon Galway, owner of the Home Instead Senior Care® franchise in northern Toronto. Reta began refusing bathing and personal care, was often anxious and agitated, and refused food during mealtimes. Though the facility staff were well trained in Alzheimer’s care, Reta’s disease had progressed to a stage that the staff was unable to effectively manage. Typically, this particular home does not permit patients to stay once they have entered stage three Alzheimer’s. However, due to long waiting lists for other facilities that could accept Reta, the home allowed Sharon and her team of CAREGiversSM to step in and help. 

Capturing Life’s Journey
Capturing Life’s Journey® is an Alzheimer’s care technique taught in the Home Instead Senior Care network’s Alzheimer’s or Other Dementias CARE: Changing Aging Through Research and Education® program. It’s a method of better understanding an individual by learning about his or her life history and past experiences, and using that knowledge to customize care accordingly. Before Sharon and her team began providing care to Reta, they gathered information from the home’s staff, talked to Reta’s family, and learned what they could about her past. 

One of the biggest difficulties the home staff expressed was getting Reta to shower. Sharon and her team learned that she had never liked showers or water. They also learned she was a very particular woman and very organized. In her current stage of Alzheimer’s, she would get up early and get dressed thinking it was time to go to work. Then she grew agitated when a staff member from the home wanted her to undress for the shower. That agitation carried through to other activities throughout the day. 

Creating a Customized Care Solution
Once Sharon’s team had identified a trigger for her behavior, they came up with a plan. If they got to Reta’s room before she got out of bed and got dressed, they could redirect her behavior. So Sharon found CAREGivers who were willing to get there at 6:30 in the morning. They started slow to gain her trust. For the first few weeks they were able to do a sponge bath. After six weeks, they could see a noticeable improvement in her behavior. Now a CAREGiver is able to manage her personal care, bathing and dressing, in addition to helping her transition to group activities for the day, all within a three-hour shift. Reta no longer exhibits any of the challenging behaviors she had before the Home Instead Senior Care team began providing her with specialized one-on-one care. 

A Better Quality of Life
The additional care support Home Instead CAREGivers provided Reta took away a lot of worry for her daughter, Linda. When Linda visited, she could be a daughter again. It also made a noticeable impact on Reta. Linda said, “I can tell you without a doubt that having the specialized care added to the quality of her life.”

Volunteers needed to help make holidays merry for local seniors - News - The Times-Tribune

BY COLLEEN DAY (STAFF WRITER)
Published: November 11, 2013

A local group is looking for some help to make the holidays merry for lonely seniors.

The Be a Santa to a Senior program, sponsored by Home Instead Senior Care, collects, wraps and delivers Christmas presents to senior citizens who might be overlooked during the holidays.

Home Instead Senior Care teamed up with other local groups, including Meals on Wheels, Serving Seniors, Compassionate Care Hospice and Oakwood Terrace, to identify financially needy or isolated seniors. The program also receives support from Geisinger Community Medical Center, Gertrude Hawk Chocolates and Keystone College.

Christmas trees featuring paper ornaments with seniors' first names and their gift requests will be set up today in locations throughout the county, including the Abington Community Library, GCMC, the Carbondale Peebles and the Wal-Mart and Marshalls in Dickson City.

Shoppers can pick up a paper ornament, buy the requested gift and return the unwrapped present, with the ornament attached, to the participating location. Gifts will be collected through Dec. 9.

Terry Wise, associate professor of sports management at Keystone College, said the college became involved in the program several years ago when a student worked with Home Instead Senior Care for her senior project.

"She loved the program, but she said that what was holding it back was that they had no place to wrap all of the presents they collect," Ms. Wise said. "She wanted to bring the program on campus."

Keystone College now supports the program by giving volunteers a place to wrap the presents. This year's gift wrap party is scheduled Dec. 10 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

"It's important that students are involved in the community. They need to give back and know that everyone is not as fortunate as they are," Ms. Wise said. "It's important for them to look outside of the microcosm of the college, see what's going on their community and get involved."

Jessica Engel, marketing and sales manager at Home Instead Senior Care and Be a Santa to a Senior coordinator, said the program began about 10 years ago as a way to ensure senior citizens do not spend the holiday season alone.

"People of all ages love the holidays," Ms. Engel said. "The gift is in the present, but it's also in having that connection and interaction with someone else. That is the gift for them. We have so many seniors in this area, and many of them are isolated."

Last year the program reached out to more than 800 seniors and ended up with about double that in presents.

"Everyone always gets a present. No senior on our list ever goes without. What we see is a lot of people buy not only what is on the ornament, but also a little something extra," Ms. Engel said

For more information on the program, visit BeaSantatoaSenior.com or call 570-687-4755.

Contact the writer: cday@timesshamrock.com

Volunteers needed to help make holidays merry for local seniors - News - The Times-Tribune

Increase in use of meal delivery programs could reduce LTC facility admissions

October 14, 2013 by Lois A. Bowers, Senior Editor of Long Term Living

Long-term care facilities could see fewer new residents, but states could save money by expanding meal-delivery programs that enable some seniors to stay in their homes longer or avoid moving altogether, according to a new study by Brown University investigators.
The public health researchers analyzed state, Medicaid and nursing home data to project that if each of the contiguous states expanded by one percent the percentage of senior citizens receiving delivered meals, then 1,722 more Medicaid recipients would avoid living in a long-term care facility. Twenty-six states would realize a net annual savings from expanding their programs, whereas 22 would end up spending more. In every state, however, more "low-needs" seniors would be able to remain in their homes regardless of whether their care is paid for by Medicaid.

Across the country, the one percent expansion would bring meals to 392,594 more seniors at a cost of more than $117 million, the researchers say. Because 1,722 seniors would no longer need to live in nursing homes on Medicaid, total Medicaid savings would total $109 million, they add. The additional food delivery costs outstrip Medicaid savings nationwide, even though most states would save money on a net basis, because in some very large states with relatively few low-care seniors or relatively low Medicaid per diems, food costs outweighed the resulting Medicaid savings on a relatively large scale.

Study lead author Kali Thomas, PhD, assistant professor in Brown’s School of Public Health, said the findings provide guidance for state policymakers as they consider the future of their home-delivered meals programs, which are conducted under the Older Americans Act. States projected to lose money can opt to focus their efforts in ways that are more precise than an across-the-board expansion, she adds.

“We’re not proposing that all states simply increase the proportion of age-65-plus receiving meals by one percent,” Thomas says. “But if they were to target these vulnerable people who are at risk for nursing home placement, they would likely see more savings. This is a program that has the potential to save states a lot of money if it’s done correctly.”
Policymakers should consider not only the fiscal implications of providing home-delivered meals, which the study quantifies, but also the impact on individual seniors, says Thomas, who adds that she has seen the benefits anecdotally as a Meals on Wheels volunteer in Rhode Island.

The National Institute on Aging and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality funded the research, which is published in the October issue of Health Affairs.

Living with Alzheimer’s: A Journey of Caring

As part of World Alzheimer’s Month, Home Instead Senior Care and Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) will co-host three roundtable events around the world to address the need for support for family members who care for those with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

Roger Baumgart, Jeff Huber and Dave Banark will be representing Home Instead Senior Care at these events called Living with Alzheimer’s: A Journey of Caring in Washington D.C (Sept. 19), London (Sept. 20), and Beijing (Sept. 26).

Each panel of prestigious Alzheimer’s experts – including influential healthcare professionals, nonprofit organizations, government officials, opinion leaders and family caregivers – will be moderated by noted international journalists.  We encourage you to follow the discussion on Twitter and Facebook using #Alztalk2013.

The events will be moderated by:

o   Barry Petersen, Emmy Award-wining CBS Correspondent, Author of Jan’s Story about his late wife’s struggle with Alzheimer’s (North America)

o   Fergus Walsh, BBC Medical Correspondent (Europe)

o   Professor  Luning Wang, President, Alzheimer’s Disease China (Asia)

Panel members for the Living with Alzheimer’s: A Journey of Caring event include:

o   Marc Wortmann, Executive Director, Alzheimer’s Disease International

o   George Vradenburg, Chairman of USAgainstAlzheimer's

o   Dr. Robert Yeoh, former president Alzheimer’s Australia

o   Professor Angela Leung, Hong Kong University

o   Dr. David Saucedo, esteemed Alzheimer’s physician/researcher in Mexico

o   Dr. David Hilfiker, retired physician with Alzheimer’s, blogger recently featured in Mashable

o   Linda Lawrence, family caregiver from Canada

o    Dr. Alexander Sandy Halperin, Alumni Member of the National Alzheimer's Association Early Stage Advisory Group --- Alzheimer's Advocate; former dentist with Alzheimer’s

o    Karen Garner, Blogger, caregiver to husband with Younger Onset Alzheimer’s

o    Deb Cohen, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Knowledge Development for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)

o    Anne Connelly, Aging Well Network in Ireland

o    Dr.  Hans Groth, World Demographic & Ageing Forum

o    Professor Martin Prince, King’s College

Older Adults Willing to Change Lifestyle to Avoid Fracture

A new study has found that older patients who know they are at risk of fractures will make positive lifestyle changes to avoid them, such as exercising, wearing proper footwear and taking supplements.

The findings are important, according to Dr. Joanna Sale, a researcher at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, and lead author of the study. She says much previous research in bone health has focused on medications or found that people make negative lifestyle changes such as reducing housework or leisure activities because they are afraid of falling.

Half of all women over the age of 50 and one in five men over 50 will have a fracture after falling from standing height or lower. Having one such fracture doubles a person's risk of having another. Dr. Sale, a clinical epidemiologist, said her research was aimed at finding ways to prevent those repeat fractures, particularly hip fractures, because about half of all hip fracture patients die or end up in long-term care facilities. Dr. Sale's study, published online in the journal Osteoporosis International, looked at patients over 65 who participated in the Osteoporosis Exemplary Care Program at St. Michael's Fracture Clinic.

Research participants were interviewed about their perceived fracture risk, recommendations they received about their bone health, results of bone density tests and any lifestyle or behavioral changes they made since their last fracture. Many said they didn't want to think about the possibility of a future fracture and felt they had little control over risk factors such as age – yet they all engaged in a number of daily behavioral strategies to manage their fracture risk. Most were concerned about being careful, such as using handrails or wearing proper shoes.

Faster Parkinson’s Detection Could Lead to Better Control

Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder that affects a half million people in the United States, with about 50,000 newly diagnosed cases each year. And, it normally strikes those past age 60.

Shaky hands, tremors, rigid muscles, slower movements are all the symptoms most often associated with Parkinson’s disease.

There is no cure and, until now, no reliable method for detecting the disease. An encouraging glimmer of hope exists, though. A research team from Michigan State has developed an innovative detection method they say is a major breakthrough in diagnosing Parkinson’s in early stages – the point at which treatment to control symptoms is most effective.

The method of detection, developed in part by Rahul Shrivastav, professor and chair of MSU’s Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, involves monitoring a patient’s speech patterns, specifically movement patterns of the tongue and jaw. Shrivastav says Parkinson’s affects all patients’ speech and changes in speech patterns are detectable before other movement and muscles are affected by the disease.

The new early detection method has proved to be more than 90 percent effective and is noninvasive and inexpensive. Requiring as little as two seconds of speech, monitoring can be done remotely and in telemedicine applications. Since there is no cure for Parkinson’s disease, early detection is particularly important because the treatments currently available for controlling symptoms are most effective at that stage.

Shrivastav hopes that by designing tools to capture those changes, which are very small, inaudible changes, neurologists and other health care providers will have a way to make a diagnostic decision that isn’t possible otherwise.

For more about this study, visit http://msutoday.msu.edu/360/2013/detecting-parkinsons-for-better-treatment/.

Binge Drinking Tied to Insomnia, Study Reveals

A new study finds that for older people there appears to be a clear link between binge drinking and insomnia. Researchers found adults ages 55 and older who binged on average more than two days a week had an 84 percent greater odds of reporting an insomnia symptom compared with non-binge drinkers.

According to the authors, this is the first study to their knowledge that examines binge drinking (four or more drinks) and its association with insomnia symptoms in older adults.

Results show that overall, 26.2 percent of participants had two or less binge drinking days per week, on average, and 3.1 percent had more than two days per week, on average. Adjustment for demographic variables, medical conditions, and elevated depressive symptoms were made for participants.

“It was somewhat surprising that frequent binge drinking (more than two binge drinking days per week, on average), but not occasional binge drinking (less than two binge drinking days per week, on average) had a significant association with self-reported insomnia symptoms,” said lead author Sarah Canham, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in Drug Dependence Epidemiology, John Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Mental Health in Baltimore, Md.

Insomnia is not the only risk. This report comes on the heels of 2012 research, which found that adults 65 and older who binge drink at least twice a month are two-and-a-half times more likely to suffer cognitive and memory declines, compared with seniors who don’t binge drink, according to research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

For more about binge drinking, visit http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/alcohol/seniors-who-binge-drink-more-likely-to-suffer-cognitive-decline.

New Report: Seniors Vulnerable to Extreme Heat

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are urging people – senior citizens in particular – to prepare themselves for the extreme heat of summer after releasing a report showing the U.S. averages 658 deaths a year from this heat. That’s more deaths than from tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined. In this new report, more than two-thirds of the deaths (69 percent) occurred at home, and 91 percent of those homes lacked air conditioning. Most of those who died were unmarried or living alone, and 72 percent were male.

“Taking common sense steps in extreme temperatures can prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths,” says Robin Ikeda, MD, MPH, acting director of the National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. The CDC is urging Americans to stay cool, hydrated and informed. Extreme heat affects everyone, but the elderly, children, the poor or homeless, persons who work or exercise outdoors, and those with chronic medical conditions are most at risk.

Extreme heat can lead to very high body temperatures, brain and organ damage, and even death. People suffer heat-related illness when their bodies are unable to compensate and cool themselves properly.

A study released recently in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that 7,233 heat-related deaths occurred in the United States from 1999 to 2009. And, an analysis of 2012 data indicates that deaths are on the rise. In a two-week period in 2012, excessive heat exposure resulted in 32 deaths in four states – four times the typical average for those states for the same two-week period from 1999-2009.

http://www.cdc.gov/extremeheat/seniors.html

Heat Takes a Toll on Seniors

Nobody likes extreme and prolonged heat, but such conditions can be deadly for seniors.  On average, more than 1,500 people in the U.S. die each year from excessive heat, according to NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA This number is greater than the 30-year mean annual number of deaths due to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined. 

 

 

The elderly are often the most vulnerable to severe heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/elderlyheat.asp).  Why? Their bodies do not adjust as well as young people to sudden changes in temperature, they are more likely to have a chronic medical condition that changes normal body responses to heat, and they are often on a prescription medicine that impairs the body's ability to regulate its temperature or that inhibits perspiration.

If you are a senior or caring for an elderly individual, the following tips will help them combat the heat:

 

• Keep a glass of water in every room to quickly and easily access fluids. Drink plenty of fluids, even if you don’t feel thirsty.

 

• Go through the closet and remove all heavy materials, long sleeves and dark colors. Store them until fall.

 

• Set fashion trends. If you’re in need of new clothes, check out the latest fashion magazines. Look for short sleeves, lightweight rayons or cottons, and light-colored clothing that reflect the heat.

 

• Stay out of the sun during the hottest times of the day. Fill up your bird feeder in the morning and water the lawn at night. Sunburn makes the job of heat dissipation that much more difficult.

 

• Put down that broom! Save household chores, particularly washing and drying clothes and operating the dishwasher, for evenings, when the weather is cooler.

 

• Take a nap during high heat times – between 3 and 5 p.m. in the afternoon, for instance – or find a good television program or movie to watch.

 

• While you’re napping or enjoying a movie, keep shades down and blinds pulled.  Keeping a house tightly closed is more energy efficient.

 

• Invite your friends over for an iced tea break. Replace coffee breaks with iced tea or lemonade breaks in an air-conditioned spot – not the patio. Staying in an air-conditioned dwelling during hot days is safer.

 

• Go on a shopping spree. If you don’t have an air conditioner, or if yours is broken, spend the afternoon at the mall. You can shop or just enjoy cool drinks and a good book.

 

• Put away that meat loaf recipe for the summer and track down new recipes for fruit and vegetable salads. Foods like proteins that increase metabolic heat production also increase water loss.

 

• If increased use of a central air conditioning system causes higher utility bills that are a problem for your budget, consider purchasing a fan or small window unit that can cool down a home at a lower cost. In fact, window fans provide an effective way to exhaust the day’s hot air during the night.  

 

For more information about the heat, visit the National Weather Service Web site at http://www.noaa.gov and the Federal Emergency Management Agency Web site at www.fema.gov.

Longevity Genes Protect From Cancer, Research Reveals

Good news on the longevity front. Recent research has found that if you have a mother older than 91 and a father older than 87, they likely have passed on genes to you that could significantly reduce your chance of getting cancer and other common diseases associated with aging.

An international collaboration has discovered that people in the U.S. who had a long-lived mother or father were 24 percent less likely to get cancer.

The scientists classified long-lived mothers as those who survived past 91 years old, and compared them to those who reached average age spans of 77 to 91. Long-lived fathers lived past 87 years old, compared with the average of 65 to 87 years. The scientists studied 938 new cases of cancer that developed during the 18-year follow-up period.

Researchers found that overall mortality rates dropped by up to 19 percent for each decade that at least one of the parents lived past the age of 65.

In the study, published in the Journals of Gerontology: Series A (The Oxford Journals), the scientists analyzed data from a series of interviews conducted with 9,764 people taking part in the Health and Retirement Study. The participants were based in America, and were followed up over 18 years, from 1992 to 2010.

“Previous studies have shown that the children of centenarians tend to live longer with less heart disease, but this is the first robust evidence that the children of longer-lived parents are also less likely to get cancer,” according to Professor William Henley, from the University of Exeter Medical School. “We also found that they are less prone to diabetes or suffering a stroke.”

Welcome research for you, but that still leaves the dilemma of how to care for your parents. It is possible for your mom and dad to continue to remain at home, with a little extra help. Learn more about at-home services for seniors by contacting your local Home Instead Senior Care^® office.

For more information about Home Instead Senior Care^®, contact Home Instead Senior Care at 570-586-3135 or go to HomeInstead.com/nepa.

 

 For more about this study, go to http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/05/16/gerona.glt061.abstract.

New Social Security Service Target of Scammers

For those who receive benefits or have Medicare, “my Social Security” can help check estimates of your retirement, disability and survivor’s benefits, your earnings record, and the estimated Social Security and Medicare taxes you’ve paid.

However, you should be suspicious of any emails sent to you.

The my Social Security account is a recently released new service for the public, but the agency is not sending emails to generate enrollment. To open one of these personal accounts, citizens should go directly to my Social Security at http://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/. If you receive an email inviting you to join, do not click any links.

Criminals are using "phishing" emails encouraging senior citizens to create an account. Rest assured, any email promoting this are not coming from the agency, according to information from the Social Security Administration.

Here’s how to detect a fraudulent email message:

·         Any email coming from Social Security will come from an email address ending in “.gov”, although you should not trust the “From” address, since attackers can spoof this address.

·         Any email coming from Social Security will not have email addresses associated with private companies such as Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc.

·         Look for poor word choice, phrasing, spelling or extra words that are not needed in the text.

·         Links to Social Security websites will always begin with http://www.socialsecurity.gov/ or https://secure.ssa.gov/ (the slash after ".gov" is important). For example, you should not trust a link that looks like this: http://www.socialsecurity.gov.bx.co.rx/setup. If you are suspicious of a link in an email, use your mouse to “hover over” the link to see the web address.

 

Please note: Members of the public who receive phishing emails should forward them to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team at phishing-report@us-cert.gov.

To create an account on my Social Security, you must provide some personal information about yourself and give answers to some questions that only you are likely to know. Next, you create a username and password that you will use to access your online account. This process protects you and keeps your personal Social Security information private. Scammers are developing new ways every day to defraud seniors of their hard-earned money. To learn more about the Home Instead Senior Care network’s Protect Seniors from Fraud^SM program, go to ProtectSeniorsFromFraud.com.

Driving with Pets Not a Good Idea

Seniors who regularly put their dog in the car whenever they drive are increasing their risk for being involved in a vehicle collision, say University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers. They say both overall and at-fault crash rates for drivers 70 years of age or older were higher for those whose pet typically rode with them.

 “This is the first study to evaluate the presence of pets in a vehicle as a potential internal distraction for elderly drivers,” said Gerald McGwin, Ph.D., a professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, Ophthalmology and Surgery and senior author of the study.

The study was published in Accident Analysis and Prevention. Distracted driving has become a focal point for the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration and is defined as anything that could potentially remove a driver’s eyes from the road, their hands from the steering wheel or their concentration from the task of driving.

The study, conducted in the Clinical Research Unit in the UAB Department of Ophthalmology, enrolled 2,000 community-dwelling (those who do not live in assisted living or nursing homes) licensed drivers age 70 and older, of whom 691 had pets.

The crash risk for drivers who always drove with their pets was double that of drivers who never drove with a pet, while crash rates for those who sometimes or rarely drove with pets were consistent with the rates for non-pet owners.

More than half the pet owners said they took their pet with them in the car at least occasionally, usually riding on the front passenger seat or in the back seat.

Hospice Care Used More, But Often Too Late | Sci-Tech Today



Hospice Care Used More, But Often Too Late | Sci-Tech Today