By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

The Obama administration today launched the first national plan for addressing Alzheimer’s disease, with the goal of finding a way to prevent or treat the disease by 2025. The plan includes the launch of a new website, Alzheimers.gov.

On the site’s homepage, Alan Holbrook of Groton tells his family’s story.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Dr. Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health information technology, was in Boston yesterday to speak at the Health 2.0 conference about his vision for what the government can do to pave the way for new technologies in health care. He laid out his main points, five things government can do to foster innovation, in an interview just before he took the stage.

By Glen Johnson, Globe Staff

Speaking to both state and national audiences, Governor Deval Patrick today defended the idea of government promoting near universal health care, even as he called on lawmakers, health care providers, and the business community to work jointly on controlling its cost. Patrick said he will only support final legislation that controls spending, provides flexibility in how to achieve it, “accountability” for failing to do so, and makes changes to the state’s tort laws.

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

A scientist who does research on HIV has been appointed the interim director of Harvard Medical School’s primate research center. In a letter sent to the staff of the New England Primate Research Center Monday afternoon, Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the medical school, announced that Dr. R. Paul Johnson, an associate professor of medicine, would take over leadership of the center, where four primate deaths in less than two years revealed troubling gaps in basic animal care procedures.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Two pieces on the Globe’s opinion pages take different stances on the bills now under consideration by the House and Senate for controlling health care costs in the state. Dr. Don Berwick argues that the more aggressive House bill, or a bolder plan, is appropriate. A Globe editorial argues against imposing on a market already working to lower costs.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Countries up and down the global economic ladder are pushing toward universal health care for their citizens even as the United States considers pulling back on its efforts to provide coverage for more people, Noam N. Levey of the Los Angeles Times reported in a fascinating story over the weekend.

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff

A top congressional budget staffer told a gathering of public-policy specialists and disability advocates this week that financial pressures will force some reforms to the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program for disabled children, but others at a Brookings Institution forum said the political climate will make sweeping changes unlikely. Meanwhile, the investigative arm of Congress is preparing to release a report on the program, and the Institute of Medicine is in talks over a major research study.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Some New Hampshire lawmakers are trying to clear the way for a large for-profit cancer care center to open on its southern border, in hopes that it will attract patients from Massachusetts, Rob Weisman reports in today’s Globe. Hospitals in Massachusetts and nonprofit hospitals in New Hampshire are concerned.

By Chelsea Conaboy , Globe Staff

Small employers increasingly are offering employees health insurance plans that require them to pay more for tests, treatments, and doctor visits. An analysis by the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy found that 27 percent of people who got their insurance through the small group market at the end of 2010 were in a plan with a lower “actuarial value,” meaning they had higher deductibles and copayments. That’s up from just 2 percent in the first quarter of 2008.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Facing a rising clamor against the state’s controversial ban on bake sales in school, the Patrick administration Thursday directed pubilc health officials to do an about-face and exclude classroom and fund-raising events from the new rules that were to take effect Aug. 1.

The state’s department of public health announced Thursday afternoon that it will pass emergency amendments to its regulations last year that curtailed the sale of sweets in school cafeterias and vending machines.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Now that both the House and Senate have released their plans for reining in health care costs -- the former with stronger regulatory controls and the latter encouraging hospitals and doctors to continue efforts to cut costs themselves -- consumer advocates and interest groups are taking sides, staking out their own ground or mulling over their options. Here’s a look at some of the official statements that have rolled in.

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff

Critics of the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton have stepped up their campaign to stop the school’s controversial skin-shock therapy -- including disseminating a graphic video showing the school’s so-called “aversive therapy” being administered to a teenager and handing a 215,000-signature petition Wednesday to Massachusetts lawmakers.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Roughly 81 percent of employees at the state’s acute care hospitals received flu vaccinations during the most recent season, according to a report released Wednesday by Massachusetts public health regulators. The percentages increased from a statewide average of about 71 percent during the previous season, but is still not close to the minimum level of 90 percent regulators had hoped for, spurring renewed debate about mandating vaccines for hospital workers at a meeting of the Public Health Council.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Former NaviNet vice president Laurance Stuntz has been named executive director of the Massachusetts eHealth Institute, part of an independent state agency focused on developing electronic health records. Stuntz, who starts later this month, worked at NaviNet for just over a year and spent much of his career with CSC, or Computer Sciences Corporation, where he worked in the health care group. He will replace Rick Shoup, who will remain with the organization in a newly created position of chief technology officer.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

State health regulators Wednesday morning unanimously approved rules that define when a person is too cognitively or functionally impaired to drive safely. The state Public Health Council, an appointed panel of physicians, consumer advocates, and professors, adopted the rules after a brief discussion, to give health care providers guidance in evaluating when drivers should be required to give up their car keys. The rules make clear that age and illness are not by themselves disqualifying.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Three Boston organizations will receive $11.6 million from the federal government to expand programs focused on keeping sick seniors out of the hospital, improving the health of children with asthma, and connecting people who are homeless with better medical care. The grants announced Tuesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are among $123 million awarded under the Affordable Care Act to programs aimed at improving health care quality and lowering costs.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

The number of people who received inpatient treatment for drug and alcohol abuse at state-contracted facilities in Massachusetts has remained nearly unchanged since 2006, despite the expansion of insurance coverage under the state law passed that year. A Health Affairs study published Monday said the results here could serve as a warning to other states that expansion of insurance under the federal law that requires most Americans to have coverage starting in 2014, will not be enough to provide people with the care they need.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

The debate over the next stage of the state’s health care overhaul is in full swing now, reflected on the pages of the Boston Globe in more ways than one. Last week the paper covered a House proposal to cut the growth rate of health care costs in the state by about half. Today in the Metro section, Partners HealthCare ran a full-page advertisement touting the efforts it has taken in the past year to control health care costs.

By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff

Massachusetts House leaders released a major proposal to control health care costs Friday, saying their plan would save families thousands of dollars over the next five years. The bill would require the medical industry to cut the rate of growth of health spending in half, to about 3.7

percent, mirroring the overall growth in the Massachusetts economy. The legislation also takes aim at the extreme variation in prices that hospitals charge insurers and government payers for similar services.

By Gideon Gil, Globe Staff

Brigham and Women’s Hospital announced Thursday that it has appointed a new chairman of neurosurgery. Dr. E. Antonio Chiocca will lead the neurosurgery department at both the Brigham and Faulkner Hospital, beginning August 1. He has been chair of neurological surgery at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center since 2004, but he trained in Boston, completing his residency in neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.