{"id":659637,"date":"2026-10-28T14:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T14:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659637\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T14:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T14:18:08","slug":"dementia-cases-in-us-projected-to-rise-dramatically-by-2050-study-finds-us-healthcare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/659637\/","title":{"rendered":"Dementia cases in US projected to rise dramatically by 2050, study finds | US healthcare"},"content":{"rendered":"

The number of people with dementia in the United States is projected to increase dramatically over the next 25 years, which will place increasing strain on a healthcare system already struggling to help them amid cuts by the Trump administration<\/a>, experts say.<\/p>\n

According to a new study in Jama Neurology<\/a>, the annual incidence of new dementia cases globally will more than double, from 11.4m in 2023 to 24.7m in 2050. In the United States, the number of adults diagnosed with dementia each year will increase from 514,000 in 2020 to 1m by 2060, according to a Jama study<\/a> published in 2024.<\/p>\n

The United States already does not have enough geriatric specialists or people working in home care and at nursing homes. The Trump administration has also significantly cut funding for Medicaid<\/a>, which covers a substantial portion of long-term care.<\/p>\n

Those gaps mean the country must focus on preventing dementia, discovering new drugs to at least delay its onset and recruiting people for the demanding jobs of providing care for individuals with Alzheimer\u2019s, people in the field say.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies will be absorbing enormous emotional and financial costs \u2026 because dementia often requires years of increasing supervision and hands-on care, which our healthcare system is not really designed to provide,\u201d said Jordan Weiss, an assistant professor at the Optimal Aging Institute at NYU Langone.<\/p>\n

The number of people with dementia is projected to increase because life expectancy has gone up in recent decades, which means larger numbers of people are entering the age brackets in which dementia is most common. Also, in the United States, the Hispanic population almost doubled between 2000 and 2024, and that demographic is 1.5 times as likely to develop dementia as white people, according to the Alzheimer\u2019s Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you reduce the risk of dementia, just the sheer number of adults who are entering the ages where dementia is most common will increase the number of people living with and who develop dementia,\u201d Weiss said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, nursing homes are struggling to meet the existing demand. Almost all facilities reported difficulty recruiting new staff and two-thirds said a primary issue was a lack of interested or qualified candidates, according to a 2024 report from the American Health Care Association<\/a>, a nursing home lobbying group. About half reported that they had limited new admissions of residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are asking workers to perform what are very physically and emotionally demanding jobs. Helping people bathe, eat, dress and navigate cognitive decline, often for relatively low wages, unpredictable hours, and limited opportunities for advancement,\u201d Weiss said.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s need for nursing assistants and home health aides is expected to increase by 48% and 42% between 2020 and 2035, according to the Center for American Progress<\/a>. And yet, the median wage in May 2025 for nursing assistants at assisted living facilities and in home healthcare was less than $19 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>. The median wage for home health aides was $17 an hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe retention rate of those direct care workers is really, really low because it\u2019s really difficult work. You can\u2019t replace that with AI, and they are not getting adequately reimbursed,\u201d said Regina Shih, a professor of epidemiology at Emory University who studies dementia and caregiving.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the number of people becoming geriatric doctors has actually decreased in recent decades. In 2000, there were 10,270 geriatricians in the US; in 2022, there were only 7,413, according to a Jama repor<\/a>t. It is among the lowest-paid medical specialties.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it in part is related to compensation,\u201d and \u201cI just think residency interest hasn\u2019t necessarily kept pace with some other fields,\u201d Weiss said.<\/p>\n

States are taking steps to try to address the labor shortages. In 2025, almost half reported offering incentive payments to recruit or retain Medicaid home care workers, according to a KFF survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

South Carolina created a loan forgiveness program<\/a> for physicians who complete fellowships in geriatrics or geriatric psychiatry and practice in the state for at least five years.<\/p>\n

But states must also now contend with Donald Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed in 2025 and included nearly $1tn in cuts to Medicaid spending over 10 years. Medicaid pays for more than half of what the country spends on long-term care, KFF reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a serious challenge for expanding access\u201d to the growing number of people with dementia \u201cwho are eligible for Medicaid to get services like home care, personal care aid, respite care\u201d, Shih said.<\/p>\n

There have, however, been positive developments in geriatric medicine. In recent years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two drugs<\/a>, Kisunla and Leqembi, that can modestly slow cognitive decline among some patients with early Alzheimer\u2019s disease. The agency has also recently approved blood tests<\/a> that can help diagnose the disease \u2013 and perhaps even predict<\/a> if they are likely to develop it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may improve people\u2019s lives, and it may do a lot for how we slow decline or think about prevention, but it will be costly\u201d for the healthcare system, said Julie Zissimopoulos, a University of Southern California professor and principal investigator of the US Cost of Dementia<\/a> Project.<\/p>\n

Given that a cure for Alzheimer\u2019s does not appear to be imminent, it is important that we don\u2019t just wait for one, Weiss said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a real opportunity to reduce dementia risk through better cardiovascular health [and] physical activity,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cScientific breakthroughs matter, but so does building a healthcare system and infrastructure capable of delivering the care that people already need.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of people with dementia in the United States is projected to increase dramatically over the next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":["post-659637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}