Cost of Ageism in the United States

The Cost of Ageism in the United States

Ageism is not only painful for those it disadvantages, it’s also costly – an estimated $63 billion per year. Furthermore, it contributes to mental health issues and is the leading cause of suicide in older adults. At a time when people are living longer, healthier and more productive lives, the rest of society persists in seeing older people as obsolete. This is according to an article published in Seniors Matter.

Dr. Bill Thomas, a geriatrician and a Nexus Fellow, points out ageism in the United States in the documentary film The Roots and Consequences of Ageism in America. “Society holds up very young and inexperienced people as being the paragons of virtue and strength and idealizes them while setting aside real elders with real lived experience making them virtually invisible.”

“Ageism is common, but it doesn’t need to be inevitable,” says Erica Harrison, the author of the article, and expands on what can be done by individuals to change the narrative.

  • Be inclusive
  • Don’t make assumptions
  • Avoid ageist language
  • Call out ageism

Read the whole piece: Seniors Matter.

 

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The Increase of Solo Agers in America and What that Means for the Caregiving Industry

In a Forbes.com article written by solo aging expert and Nexus Fellow Sara Zeff Geber, we learn that childlessness has nearly doubled since the silent generation–and it’s compounding some existing problems. Geber discusses the various reasons why many more people of childbearing age in the 1970s decided against having children. In addition, she points out that many baby boomers approaching retirement age will lack the family caregiving options that previous generations had.

Read the full article at Forbes

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A New Wrinkle on Aging – Jill Vitale-Aussem

In a recent blog post, Jill Vitale-Aussem, President & CEO of Christian Living Communities, describes how many women feel about aging–and it’s not good. Most times we focus on the negatives: the wrinkles, the aches and pains, the doctor appointments and so on. Fortunately, she has a more positive message to share, asking “what’s awesome about aging?”

It turns out that while there are challenges that come with aging, there are also many upsides. Most older people agree that their lived experience makes them wiser than they used to be. There’s some evidence that older people are better able to see things from different perspectives than their younger counterparts and better able to find compromises. Studies also show that in our later years we are often just plain happier and have better well-being than when we were younger.

Finally Vitale-Aussem reminds us that maintaining an attitude of gratitude is key. After all, she points out, “aging is just another word for living.” And living will be much more rewarding if we can focus on the positive aspects of life.

Read the full article: https://www.christianlivingcommunities.org/blog/a-new-wrinkle-on-aging/

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Data For Health Plans

Data gaps could amplify difficulties for health plans

In an interview with Health Payer Intelligence, Caroline Pearson, Nexus Fellow and Senior VP of Health Care Strategy at NORC at the University of Chicago, emphasized that the industry’s understanding of effective payment models and strategies for social determinants of health management is “riddled with unknowns.” Her remarks appear in an article: The State of Payer, CBO Social Determinants of Health Contracting.

It is natural, for example, for organizations like large healthcare providers and payers to turn to smaller community-based partners for on-the-ground insight and service delivery. However, according to Pearson, it can be problematic with smaller partners who lack the infrastructure to cover a large population, or are unable to provide the kind of data needed for decision-making.

How can you know if a community-based organization is going to be a good partner for you? Pearson says one key indicator may be their ability to gather and exchange this data.

“The data requirements to deliver supplemental benefits to a health plan population are pretty high: you need some way to identify those members, you need to be able to receive the referrals from the health plan, and then, increasingly, those health plans really want a feedback loop where you can give them information about the result,” Pearson said.

But Pearson explains that even if an organization lacks this ability it’s still possible to work with them –if you can involve a vendor who provides a platform to bridge the gap.

Read more

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housing for solo agers

What senior living providers need to know about Solo Agers

Adult children do many things for their aging parents, including helping them find a senior community. But what about “Solo Agers”? This term was coined by author and solo aging expert Dr. Sara Zeff Geber to describe those seniors who find themselves aging alone. Dr. Geber wrote the 2018 book, Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers.

According to Geber, “A significant number of Boomers will not have adult children to help them with care or relocation if living independently becomes difficult or impossible.” She cites geriatric specialist Maria Carney, MD, and colleagues, who determined in 2016 that “approximately 22% of older Americans had no one to turn to in a crisis.”

In a recent article in the International Council on Active Aging’s The Journal on Active Aging, Geber points out that, while the COVID pandemic has brought into national focus the devastating isolation of those aging alone, it also made clear that there are opportunities for senior housing communities and the aging services industry to provide for the needs of solo agers. The important first step is to understand this cohort, and their unique needs.

“I noticed many of my contemporaries were starting to spend huge chunks of time and energy helping to care for their aging parents,” said Geber. “They were chauffeuring their parents to appointments, shopping for their groceries and other essentials, monitoring their medications, arranging for home repairs, and spending considerably more time on the phone and in person with them than they had in the past.” That got Geber wondering. “Who is going to do all the above for those of us without children? More questions arose. How many of us are there? What are our options? And how should we prepare?”

Among the differences she noticed that set Solo Agers apart:

  • Solo Agers (women and men) tend to be more highly educated and to have made a good living over their lives, making them excellent candidates for higher-end senior living.
  • Congregate living offers the advantage of built-in community, to help Solo Agers make social connections, and avoid isolation and loneliness.
  • Choosing independent living that is connected to communities that also provide options for higher levels of care can provide peace of mind to Solo Agers, who want to prepare for greater care needs in the future.
  • Many seniors find comfort in moving closer to adult children or grandchildren. Solo Agers may likewise choose proximity to loved ones, who may be extended family or friends.
  • Solo Agers have typically been living independently, as “masters of their universe” their whole lives, and will want choices for how they live that allow them to continue to learn, develop, and pursue healthy lifestyles.

What are the challenges for senior living communities? According to Geber, “the first hurdle will be selling the concept.” This involves knowing how to sell directly to seniors who may approach the community alone, and make their decisions without the assistance, encouragement or “cajoling” of adult children.

The second hurdle is to develop models of housing that appeal to Solo Agers. One good example, Geber suggests, is to build residences, such as Garden Spot Village’s Cooperative Living House, that house a small number of unrelated roommates. The home provides private bedrooms and baths for the residents and shared communal space. Roommates in these residences maintain some privacy and independence, but they also have the opportunity to develop friendships and even family-like connections, and to provide one another with mutual support, much like what happened in ”The Golden Girls” TV show from the 80s).

Another example is cohousing. Geber describes it as “generally a grassroots effort by individuals who want to create a way to live together in an intentional community.” According to Geber, “Senior cohousing is one of the fastest-growing segments of the cohousing movement.” It’s also “extremely attractive to Solo Agers.”

According to Geber, the window of opportunity has arrived. Boomers have already begun to retire, and the number of Boomers who are also Solo Agers is large and growing. “Many of these individuals will have no real need to continue ‘aging in place’ in their single-family homes,” she said. “They will remain there, however, unless senior living communities demonstrate a viable and attractive alternative—one that meets Solo Agers’ needs to maintain their social networks and participate actively in their communities.”

Download the full article here.

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Innovation for Senior Living

Are We Being Bold Enough? Bob Kramer Keynotes SLIF 2021

Nexus founder and Fellow Bob Kramer set the tone of this year’s Senior Living Innovation Forum by kicking off the first day of the conference with a provocative keynote speech. “Are we being bold enough?” asked Kramer. “No. The industry demands a significant shakeup.”

What does innovation mean for the next generation of senior living customers? Will they be our customers? Is increased longevity a blessing or a curse? Will the boomers be a vast resource that is both unwilling and unwanted as contributors to our society and economy? What does senior living have to do with it? And what about those who have been left behind in the longevity revolution?

According to Kramer, the upcoming generation of senior living customers “wants nothing to do with senior living” because the image that comes into their minds when they think about senior living is a negative one. It is our job, he said, to reimagine and redefine what senior living can mean for the next generation.

His keynote set off some lively conversations and debates, with several following speakers referencing and adding further insight to Kramer’s remarks.

Other highlights of the event include a talk from Nexus Fellow and SmartLiving 360 CEO Ryan Frederick about his book, “Right Place, Right Time: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Home for the Second Half of Life” and Fellow Sarah Thomas’ interactive session on experience design.

 

Watch Bob Kramer’s entire speech:

 

Photo courtesy of Influence Group.

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Healthcare at Home Options for Seniors

More Healthcare at Home Options for Seniors with the Choose Home Care Act

Big news on the horizon for seniors and the aging services industry. A bill introduced last month in the United States Senate would allow for in-home care alternatives to skilled nursing facilities for rehab and post-acute services. The Choose Home Care Act, which was sponsored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.), has bi-partisan support.

In a recent article in Senior Housing News, Anne Tumlinson, CEO of ATI Advisory, Founder of Daughterhood, and a Nexus Fellow, weighed in on the winners and losers, should this bill become law.

It would be a big win for seniors, allowing eligible Medicare patients to receive extended post-acute care services at home, rather than in a nursing home, “without placing undue burden on families to care for them.” According to Tumlinson, “The benefits are long overdue.”

Qualified home care agencies would also benefit, according to Tumlinson, with an additional avenue for billable services. “This legislation would essentially allow home health agencies to compete with skilled nursing facilities,” she said.

According to Tumlinson, the flexibility to consumers means more overlap in the post-acute services that skilled nursing facilities and home health care agencies could offer. Skilled nursing facilities may view the Choose Home Care Act as a threat. In fact, the American Health Care Association has expressed concerns that “it would supplant existing benefits and increase out-of-pocket costs.” If the bill passes, it may provide opportunities for private pay senior living providers, Tumlinson explained. “They can entertain partnerships with qualified home health agencies. For instance, they might team up with a Medicare-certified home health provider that will receive the expanded Medicare payments to care for residents that are recently discharged from the hospital, while the senior living provider would be able to collect the private-pay rent.”

In addition to bi-partisan political support, the legislation has broad support, including AARP, home care advocacy groups, and senior housing organizations such as LeadingAge. The bill was introduced in the Senate in late summer, and has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee.

Read the full story at Senior Housing News.

Follow status of the bill.

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MemoryWell Receives DC Inno Fire Award

MemoryWell wins 2021 Fire Award

MemoryWell, the brainchild of Jay Newton-Small, was selected as the winner of DC Inno’s 2021 Inno Picks Fire Award.

Founded in 2016, MemoryWell was inspired by an experience that Newton-Small had when caring for her father, who had Alzheimer’s. Newton-Small, MemoryWell’s founder and CEO, and a Nexus Fellow, was a longtime Time correspondent. When she moved her father into a senior community, she decided to tell his story, so the staff would come to know him. She wrote it up and posted it on the walls in the community. Then she began to notice that staff members were discovering they had things in common with her father. They spent time talking with him about their shared experiences, and ultimately became stronger advocates for him.

Seeing the impact the written story had on her father’s experience inspired her to launch MemoryWell, to help other seniors the way she had helped her own father. The company’s writers interview residents and create life stories for them. They share the stories with the residents’ care teams as a tool to build connection and empathy, and with the residents’ loved ones as a family treasure.

As the company began to produce a wealth of stories, the vision for its mission expanded to include putting medical histories into context, informing care decisions, and creating positive financial impacts while improving health outcomes.

“Receiving a Fire Award has been an incredible accelerant for our company, adding the fuel of greater attention to the fire we lit with our raise and growth. It’s been an amazing ride so far this year!” – Jay Newton-Small

DC Inno, which hosts the annual Fire Awards, is a media company focused on the entrepreneurs, executives, startups, businesses, trends, and topics that shape the present and future of DC’s economy. The company created the Fire Awards to honor “Greater Washington’s hottest enterprises and innovators.”

“Receiving a Fire Award has been an incredible accelerant for our company, adding the fuel of greater attention to the fire we lit with our raise and growth,” said Newton-Small. “It’s been an amazing ride so far this year!” She plans to use the funding from the award to expand the company’s focus, helping to develop the company’s AI system for predicting social determinants of health for hospitals and other providers.

Here’s what DC Inno had to say about MemoryWell:

“Senior care has a relatively new advocate in this D.C. startup, bolstered by $2.5 million in seed funding in February. MemoryWell, part of the Techstars Future of Longevity Accelerator in D.C., connects seniors and their families with professional writers to, in turn, better introduce them to their caregivers and, ultimately, improve their care. It took a hit during the pandemic when most of its business at senior living and skilled nursing facilities ‘evaporated overnight while providers focused on saving lives, quite understandably,’ said founder and CEO Jay Newton-Small in March. So the company shifted to other markets such as home care, palliative and hospice care and senior living insurers — areas it’s looking to expand deeper into this year.”

Read the announcement.

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Mind games help with long-term brain health

Mind Games – Significance of Lifestyle Interventions to Prevent Cognitive Decline

Humans have long been looking for the fountain of youth. Medical advances mean that most of us can expect to live for a long time. But how we live is an important component of successful aging. Originally published in June, Mind Games is an essay that explores the current understanding of best practices for maintaining a healthy brain as we age.

With my first book coming out in the fall, I am paying more attention to bookstores. I’m finding an increasing number of titles related to aging. It’s probably not surprising as the bulge of baby boomers – the oldest of whom are now in their mid-70s – are looking to successfully age, where a longer life span is matched with a correspondingly long wealth span and health span.

A number of these books focus on brain health. It makes sense as, according to one prominent researcher, Alzheimer’s is the most feared disease, even more than cancer. The loss of independence is devastating and requires comprehensive assistance to manage life. The burden on caregivers, often a spouse or family, can be overwhelming, too. A long life span and wealth span may be of little use if health deteriorates significantly.

It’s no surprise that the recent approval of Aduhelm, Biogen’s new drug for Alzheimer’s, has received significant attention. Its impact could be transformational for millions of people, perhaps with a greater impact on society than the vaccines produced to combat COVID-19. While critics point to scant evidence of its impact on the disease, if successful, it could usher in a new wave of effective innovations to fight cognitive decline.

“We may be soon entering an era without dementia. It could arguably be just as significant as a world without cancer. Such a milestone would be one of mankind’s great achievements.”

Significance of Lifestyle Interventions to Prevent Cognitive Decline

The good news is that many of us can take measures to prevent or delay cognitive decline without relying on a pill. A range of lifestyle interventions can reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment, characterized as problems with memory, language, thinking or judgment, as well as the risk of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. Mild cognitive impairment is often a precursor to dementia.

Diet

We are learning more about the role of a healthy diet to help prevent dementia. The MIND diet, which is a variant of the Mediterranean Diet, focuses on whole grains, berries, green, leafy vegetables, other vegetables, olive oil, poultry and fish. Researchers have found that strict adherence to the MIND diet for older adults resulted in about a 50% decrease in Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Even more encouraging is that you don’t have to be rigorous in adhering to the diet to experience a positive impact. Simply eating fish once a week and incorporating greens into a meal each day could be an achievable goal that makes a difference.

Exercise

Scientists are still determining the causes of mild cognitive impairment, but some evidence suggests that a reduction in blood flow to the brain can be a factor. Regular exercise amplifies the healthy flow of blood to the brain while exercising and afterwards. Recent studies show that regular brisk walking is particularly effective in helping older adults with mild cognitive impairment. As last month’s blog emphasized, it’s valuable to move regularly, even if the measures are as simple as taking stairs or parking farther away when shopping or commuting.

Social Connection

The impact of loneliness has been well-documented: it has been found to be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and can increase the risk of premature death by as much as 30%. But loneliness is particularly harmful to the brain. Studies have shown that loneliness can increase risks of dementia by 26% and mild cognitive impairment by 105%. Regularly reaching out to friends, whether they live close by or far away, could have a greater impact on your brain health than you realize.

Sleep

Sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day. Sleep helps cement positive memories, mollify painful ones, and meld past and present knowledge, inspiring creativity. Conversely, insufficient sleep wreaks havoc. Insufficient sleep, or routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night, increases the odds of dementia. As we age, we tend to sleep less efficiently and wake up earlier, so it is important to go to bed earlier.

Hearing

Hearing loss has been shown to be a factor in cognitive loss and may also be one of the biggest potentially reversible factors. Hearing loss for a long period causes shrinkage to areas of the brain associated with memory. Proper diagnosis of hearing loss is important, as are interventions such as hearing aids.

Don’t Forget the Role of Place

Place has important direct and indirect impact on our brain health. Some places are objectively poor for our cognitive health. One study found that living near major roads is linked to an increased risk of neurological diseases, including dementia, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and multiple sclerosis. It is believed to be caused by excessive exposure to air pollution and the incessant noise of vehicles.

Place also has an indirect role, by nudging us to healthy lifestyles. A pervasive culture that values healthy eating makes it easier to eat healthy; environments that are conducive to exercise embedded in the normal course of life are beneficial; areas that promote social connection amongst neighbors can help stave off social isolation and loneliness.

An Era Without Dementia

With advances on various fronts, we may be soon entering an era without dementia. It could arguably be just as significant as a world without cancer. Such a milestone would be one of mankind’s great achievements. As Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, Director of the Neurocognitive Disorders Program at Duke University School of Medicine and co-author of The Alzheimer’s Action Plan, says, “It’s a hopeful time.”

But, even if Biogen’s Aduhelm is unsuccessful, we can be hopeful, because the right mix of diet, exercise, social connection, sleep and hearing may just be the antidote we need to keep our minds strong. And don’t forget the role of place, the foundation that helps pull it all together.

Mind Games was originally published on SmartLiving 360.

Place plays a significant yet often unacknowledged role in health and happiness. Ryan Frederick, CEO of SmartLiving 360 and a Nexus Insights Fellow is the author of the upcoming book Right Time, Right Place, in which he explores more deeply the idea that where you live matters enormously – especially during the second half of your life.

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Dr. Sara Zeff Geber on Senior Isolation and Solo Aging

Strategies for reducing isolation among solo agers – an interview with Sara Zeff Geber

Sara Zeff Geber, an expert in solo aging and a Nexus Insights Fellow, noticed something interesting. A lot of Baby Boomers were spending a lot of time, resources, and money taking care of their aging parents. And it occurred to her to wonder, for childless seniors like herself, “Who’s going to do that for us?”

That question launched a new line of research for her, and ultimately led to her book, Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers.

Zeff Geber was interviewed recently by Dr. Namrata Bagaria and Dr. Paul Merkley of Seniors Junction on their podcast “Ending Seniors’ Isolation, One Conversation at a Time.” The two asked Zeff Geber for her insights into reducing isolation and loneliness for solo agers.

Among the many insights she shared:

  • Solo aging is becoming more common. “Almost 20% of Baby Boomer women didn’t have kids.”
  • Everyone, even married couples, should plan as if they will be solo agers. “One spouse will almost always pre-decease the other, and you don’t have a crystal ball.”
  • “The research shows that isolation and loneliness are more deadly to us than 15 cigarettes a day,” said Zeff Geber. The most important thing, she suggested, is to build and maintain a social network.
  • As Bagaria points out, “Paul and I have learned on our journey that some people are naturally proactive about connecting and building a network and some have to pick up that skill.” Said Zeff Geber, “Learn to be a joiner; find a group that interests you; it could be a golf club, a book club, a dog-lovers group, or a similar-minded group at your church or synagogue”

Listen to the full podcast.

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