On March 14, 2011, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hosted a convening in Washington, DC to showcase some of the nation’s most compelling studies and evidence-based programs that have identified cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes from arts interventions.

This resulting white paper proposes a framework for long-term collaboration among the NEA, HHS, and oth - er federal agencies to build capacity for future research and evidence-sharing about the arts’ role in human development. A...

While social dancing is a popular form of recreation among older adults, its long-term mental and physical benefits have not been systematically assessed. Defining the cognitive and physical attributes of regular social dancing will help establish its health benefits as well as help plan future dance interventions to prevent adverse outcomes in older adults such as falls, slow gait, and dementia.

We examined the relation between leisure activities and the risk of dementia in a pro-spective cohort of 469 subjects older than 75 years of age who resided in the communi-ty and did not have dementia at base line. We examined the frequency of participation in leisure activities at enrollment and derived cognitive-activity and physical-activity scales in which the units of measure were activity-days per week. Cox proportional-haz-ards analysis was used to evaluate the risk of dementia according to the base-line level of participation in leisure activities, with adjustment for age, sex,...

Creative expression (CE) programs are emerging interventions to improve the quality of care and life of persons with dementia (PWDs) in long-term care settings. However, limited empirical evidence exists to support the effectiveness of these programs. Here, we report the findings from an assessment of the impact of TimeSlips (TS), a group storytelling program that encourages CE among PWDs and those who care for them.

Creativity Matters is based on the report of the first national conference on creative aging, cosponsored in 2006 by NJPAC and NCCA. Three dozen interviews with leading practitioners and an extensive literature review expanded the toolkit's content.

The information contained herein is representative of the types of preparations and steps that programming librarians should consider when planning a creative aging program. Utilizing tools and protocols developed by Lifetime Arts and featuring the exemplary creative aging program, “A Village Vision: Watercolor Painting from Experience”, this section documents the process and framework for the conception, implementation, management, completion and evaluation of a successful creative aging program in a public library. [page 4]