This Philly-based video-chatting platform helps older adults stay connected during socially isolated times

A Boston suburb combined its high school and senior center to create a hub for the community. The result has saved space and forged interesting friendships.

More than five million Americans have Alzheimer’s or similar illnesses, and that number is growing as the population ages - without any immediate prospect of a cure, advocacy groups have begun promoting ways to offer people with dementia a comfortable decline instead of imposing on them a medical model of care, which seeks to defer death through escalating interventions. An Arizona nursing home offers new ways to care for people with dementia.

Not all seniors need the various discounts they receive. The Boomerang Giving project allows them to donate back the difference of the discounts on things like movie tickets to a charity of their choice, benefiting not only a community cause but also their own mental and physical health. Various services also assist them in selecting and investing wisely in different nonprofits.

Cities tend to be dangerous and difficult places to live for older residents. A private public partnership in New York is catering to seniors through small changes in the city such as para-transit options and seniors-only hours at public establishments.

Project ECHO - driven by a single doctor with a cause - pulled together a team of specialists to develop a model that combines technology with collaborative care and careful patient tracking to help cure for diseases spread to patients around the world through community healthcare agents, as opposed to only specialty centers. This kind of "disruptive innovation" is effectively working to demonopolize health care knowledge and access, and lends to a health system capable of meeting today’s soaring demands for care.

In Syria, medical personnel are at risk of death as hospitals are frequent targets of bombing. With few medical specialists treating an assortment of injuries and diseases under the most dangerous circumstances, doctors began an underground network. This network installs cameras in hospital rooms to send pictures over mobile media to doctors abroad, doctors working on-site change their names, and animal waste powers the operations.

Fifty-one counties in the state of Wisconsin do not have child psychiatrists to provide counseling because most of them live in widely populated urban areas. Wisconsin psychiatrists now are offering telepsychiatry, which enables young people to do video conferencing and live chatting with a psychiatrist even if they are in rural areas. The program has shown that it is just as effective as in-person treatment; however, Wisconsin does not allow private insurers to pay for telemedicine services so the reimbursement for telepsychiatrists is still problematic.

Wisconsin confronts a lack of psychiatrists, in particular those who specialize in working with children. The state has begun a telepsychiatry program that enables a psychiatrist to counsel children in remote rural areas. By using webcams, the program has succeeded at eliminating travel time for psychiatrists and appropriating resources to directly and quickly serve those who need them.

In 2011, the Colorado Education Initiative (CEI), an education advocacy and research organization, launched the Colorado Legacy Schools project. The program funded innovative ways to increase the number and diversity of students taking AP classes. Instead of applying for funds to train teachers and subsidize test fees, Paonia High teamed up with two nearby schools to more than triple their collective AP offerings. It’s a promising model for rural, resource-limited schools trying to bring more college-prep opportunities to their few students.

Some inner city schools, nonprofits, and businesses in New York lack the staff to make their organizations function for the people they serve. ReServe is a program that links retired professionals with part-time jobs in schools, libraries, hospitals and other city agencies to help fil this gap.