News Briefs – FEBRUARY/MARCH 2026
by INELDA
Collaborative Care Model for Dementia Proves Cost-Effective
Supporting caregivers of people with dementia could be more clinically effective—and more cost effective—than drug interventions, concludes a recent study published in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Behavior and Socioeconomics of Aging. The collaborative care models used in the study were not predicted to extend lifespan but were projected to give people with dementia several more months at home before transitioning into a care facility.
Collaborative care programs pair professional care navigators with families supporting someone with dementia and offer guidance regarding medications, behaviors, and lifestyle, as well as matchmaking patients with specialists, reports Science News. Studying these programs is cost-prohibitive, so the Alzheimer’s and Dementia study relied on a mathematical model, using a simulated population that echoed that of a recent large-scale trial of an Alzheimer’s drug.
While the simulation method is a limitation of the study, the cost savings of collaborative care are staggering. A year and a half of collaborative care would save $300 billion in health care dollars, while the popular Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab would cost $39.5 billion over the same period.
Is It Time To Shift How We Think of Body Disposal?
Body disposal is often framed as a matter of personal choice or cultural tradition. A recent paper published in Mortality asks whether it’s time to start framing it as an environmental issue.
“First and foremost, to think about [human body disposal] as an environmental issue requires, we argue, a reconceptualisation of human death beyond individuals and its (re)imagining as something of a planetary or population matter,” the study authors write.
Each individual disposal has a small impact—the study cites research showing that a burial, on average, accounts for 0.01% of a person’s lifetime carbon footprint, with cremation accounting for 0.03%. Cumulatively, however, disposing of the bodies of the 165,000 people who die each day takes a toll on the planet. Handling body disposal in the United States and United Kingdom alone adds up to the same annual emissions as 2.7 billion road miles of diesel fuel consumption.
The authors do not argue for any particular system of body disposal, though they do mention renewable resources for cremations, alkaline hydrolysis, natural organic reduction, and other methods that carry less environmental impact than traditional body disposal. Instead, they argue for a shift in thinking: a recognition of how looking at body disposal as an intimate, personal, consumer choice may be preventing large-scale discussions about the environmental impact of that choice. Once the public mind begins to shift, policies and procedures may be better positioned to receive the same sort of attention that other consumer choices, such as solar panels and electric vehicles, have gained in past decades.
New York Signs MAiD Into Law
New York joined 12 other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing medical aid in dying. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the bill enshrining the right of terminally ill New Yorkers with six months or less to live to use MAiD, ending a legal battle that began in 2017 when the New York Court of Appeals rejected a claim that such patients had the right to prescribed lethal drugs.
“This journey was deeply personal for me,” Governor Hochul, whose mother died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, said. “New Yorkers deserve the choice to endure less suffering, not by shortening their lives, but by shortening their deaths—I firmly believe we made the right decision.”
The bill stipulates that patients wait five days between receiving a prescription and filling it; that requests for assistance in death are recorded; that patients be evaluated by a psychologist or psychiatrist; and that faith-based hospice organizations are able to opt out, among other guidelines. The bill will go into effect in August 2026.According to Compassion and Choices, one in five people living in the United States now has access to legalized end-of-life options.
Posted 2/24/2026