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Week of February 24, 2022
DENVER, COLORADO
A publication of
VOLUME 95 | ISSUE 14
Colorado Denver’s STAR program will expand this year deactivates crisis Program praised as alternative to police standards for response health care system ESTEBAN L. HERNANDEZ DENVERITE
The standards provided guidance and liability protection during periods of high stress BY JOHN INGOLD THE COLORADO SUN
Colorado on Feb. 17 deactivated socalled crisis standards of care for the health care system, another sign of the improving pandemic and the state’s move toward handling COVID as a normal part of life. Crisis standards of care provide guidance and liability protection to health care workers when they are dealing with situations where they don’t have enough resources to treat patients at the level they normally would. The state has a number of crisis standards plans, covering everything from hospice and behavioral health care to care at hospitals. The two plans deactivated deal with how hospitals can operate when staffing levels are strained and how emergency medical services can operate when they are receiving a high demand for their services. The plans, for instance, allowed hospitals to operate with higher staffing ratios than they normally would, and allowed EMS services to focus on being available for emergency calls over timeconsuming patient transfers. The state has never activated the most well-known plan, which covers how hospitals choose which patients receive potentially life-saving treatment when there are not enough resources to go around. Colorado now has no crisis standards of SEE STANDARDS, P5
INSIDE: VOICES: PAGE 8 | LIFE: PAGE 10 | CALENDAR: PAGE 7
The program isn’t quite two years old, but the Support Team Assisted Response fleet is set to expand this year as it continues providing an alternative to sending cops to specific emergency calls. The program, better known as STAR, currently has three vehicles sending a clinician and a paramedic instead of police for 911 responses. It launched as a pilot in June 2020 with just one van, only serving some parts of the city. Last fall, it expanded its coverage area SEE STAR, P3
Denver’s STAR van parked outside of the Denver Rescue Mission at Park Avenue PHOTO BY KEVIN J. BEATY/DENVERITE and Lawrence Street in February last year.
Treatment, understanding of Alzheimer’s advanced in 2021 Possible link between COVID-19 and brain is among recent developments BY ELLIS ARNOLD EARNOLD@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
In the second half of 2021, the world of Alzheimer’s research saw renewed excitement in a class of experimental Alzheimer’s drugs, according to a nonprofit that pushes for the prevention and cure of the disease.
The buzz came amid the news that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm, or aducanumab, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, a memory-affecting disease that worsens over time. “It is the first new treatment approved for Alzheimer’s since 2003,” the FDA said in a news release. The Colorado branch of the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Association highlighted some advancements made in understanding the disease in 2021.
Treatments advance The key difference between the new treatment and old methods is that Aduhelm is the first drug approved by the FDA that addresses the underlying biology of Alzheimer’s, said Jim Herlihy, spokesperson for the Alzheimer’s Association’s Colorado chapter. “All previously approved medications have only provided relief from Alzheimer’s symptoms,” Herlihy said. “These (new) drugs focus on enabling the immune system to clear protein in the brain SEE TREATMENT, P4
REACHING READERS
Book clubs are no longer just confined to living rooms P10