Centenarians and 20-somethings: What age gap? (Part 1)
Think a 22 year old has nothing in common with a 100 year old? Think again.
Last week, Evercare of UnitedHealth released findings from its fourth annual 100@100 survey. New to the survey this year was the unique comparison of the beliefs of centenarians and college seniors. Surprisingly, the two groups were in agreement on a number of things. Concerning the economy, both overwhelmingly agree that they, and not U.S. policymakers and business leaders, are responsible for their own economic future. The majority of the centenarians (89%) and college students (93%) believe home ownership remains an essential part of the American dream. Both groups feel talking with friends and family as the best way to relieve stress. Volunteering in the community is another shared value, with a third of centenarians and half of college seniors actively involved in volunteerism. Check out this YouTube video on centenarians & college seniors volunteering.
The survey, conducted by GfK Roper in April 2009, interviewed 105 active and healthy American centenarians (age 99+ at the time of the interview) and carried out an online survey of 1,036 U.S. residents ages 20-22 who expected to graduate a four-year college or university in 2009.
Part 2 will look at the survey's surprising findings regarding technology use & pop culture among these two age cohorts. -Helen Rickman
Jim Klobuchar: Moving Into a Smaller World
A few weeks ago I attended a reunion of our basic training company formed at Fort Riley, Kansas in the early months of the Korean War. This was in November of 1950, and the roll call of the neophyte soldiers who piled out of their barracks into the company street at 6 o,clock each morning was close to 160.
The count at our reunion in the central Minnesota town of Willmar was 22, almost all now 80 or 81. Most of the others were gone, as many as 30 of them lost in battle in Korea. Some of us spoke for a few minutes, telling very briefly of our lives since that first day in the company street in Kansas when a bulky master sergeant welcomed us with the comforting news that “this is the Army, you men. From now on, your minds move on one track. From now on you can give your soul to God because your butt is mine.”
He didn’t say butt. Nobody argued, for sure. Nearly 60 years later we remembered that terse introduction to this new, one-sided reality. They barked, and we jumped, the sergeant said. “You’re soldiers now.” That we were. We shared with each other what came after Kansas; Korea for some, Europe for others, death in an infantry attack for some, a full life for others. We offered a digest of our lives, but this was no poll of what we had accomplished in the years that came after, or how we identified ourselves and our journeys. Success stories were basically avoided. This was reminiscence, awkward at first because not many of us recognized each other although we certainly remembered the names and some of the faces. And after the stories, slowly at first and then with clear and unapologetic emotion, came the thanksgivings.
Our lives had been good: marriage, children, work, reasonable comfort and fulfillment..Some farmed, others worked and lived in the big city or in the rural towns. Nobody talked about the by-pass surgery and the pharmaceutical potions as common common as Social Security to practically all of us. Since almost all of us had been conscripted out of Minnesota , it went unspoken that most of the credit for our gathering belonged to the part of the world where almost all of us still live, and to its conviction that life-saving medicine and care should be available to all.
And so for three or four hours, we were a community. I regretted leaving. It was impossible to ignore the reality of age but a gift to spend at least three or four hours out of what we now see as a precious time and a kind of watershed in our lives.
It was also a gift to recognize once more that in the deepening of our time,, most of the other rewards and urgencies of our later years dwindle beside the rewards of nurturing the relationships in our lives—the ultimate gift of re-discovery.
Bacardi Rum Embraces Go-Go Boots and 1860s, But Forget About Baby Boomers and Seniors
If you get a second watch this new Bacardi ad. Then read marketer Brent Green's analysis at Boomer. Brent is a boomer. Brent is insightful. Brent has a blog. Marketers who ignore that consumers are aging do so at their own risk.
Elder Innovators - A Benefit of the Age Wave
Do you know elder innovators?
There are a lot of them. Increasingly I'm seeing "work related" news stories of people working, innovating, growing and contributing in their senior years. For example, here are three older people featured just yesterday in the Twin Cities newspapers Minneapolis Star Tribune and Saint Paul Pioneer Press - doing big time stuff:
- John Morrissey, 79, just invented the GameDoctor Video Game Timer What a timely tool for parents who want to moderate gaming by their children. You can read his story here.
- Warren MacKenzie, 85, legendary potter makes pots 7 days a week. He calls himself a "mud person." Read his story and watch video of him here.
- Bob Albertson, 72, has built a fully electric Ford Ranger pickup truck. Yes, a fully electric pickup truck. Too bad Detroit didn't know about him earlier. This was a Sunday "newspaper only" feature that will hit the web later this week at www.startribune.com.
So many people point to the "drag" of the age wave. Elder innovation is a whole different side of the coin that's only increasing and we're better off because of it.
To Solve Long-Term Care Financing, You have to Ask the Right Question: Here's How You Can Help
You can read Stacy Becker's article here (scroll to page 5). There's also a great article on Page 1 by LaRhae Knatterud, who has one of the coolest titles in America: Director of Aging Transformation at Minnesota's Department of Human Services.
Stacy, who is the Citizens League's director on this project advises local and regional governments, non-profits, foundations, and private companies on issues of economic development, community building, and innovation. She was the budget director for the City and County of San Francisco. She also served in the administrations of Saint Paul mayors Jim Scheibel and Norm Coleman.
Stacy was the first non-engineer to hold the title of Saint Paul Public Works Director. She streamlined the department, improved its credit rating, improved citizen participation, and resolved long-standing controversies around key infrastructure projects. Becker also served as the director of research and development for the Saint Paul Police Department and as budget director for the City of Saint Paul. She has degrees from Macalester College, Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the London School of Economics, where she was a Bush Leadership Fellow.
How the Public Can Participate
The League is now bringing the project to the public. Stacy will be leading several citizen workshops. Learn more about them and how to sign up here.
A Simple Skill With A Lot Of Potential
Technology and aging, a subject I'm passionate about, is all over the e-waves. Yet, as hard as it may be to believe, there are many older adults who not only don't have access to a computer, they don't know how to use one or how it might be of a benefit to them.
For the past 2 years, I've been working with a group of older adults as a volunteer tutor in an ESL (English as a Second Language) program in downtown Minneapolis. These English language learners are refugees from Somalia and are a part of the Twin Cities' thriving Somali community, about 30,000 strong. The students attend the SALT (Somali Adult Literacy Training) school free of charge, where they learn practical English to help with daily tasks such as making doctor appointments and understanding bus schedules. Unique challenges to their literacy learning, in addition to being victims of war, is the fact that prior to 1972, there was no written form of the Somali language. As a result, the Somali elders of today are missing basic literacy logic and struggle with Western concepts of learning. As a result, their literacy learning progression is considerably slower than that of most immigrant groups.
This past year, I conducted a 4 1/2 month study as part of my gerontology grad school work. Using SALT's computer lab, 23 Somalis (average age 60) learned how to type using Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing software. None of the students had used a computer keyboard before. By the end of the study, most of the students were able to achieve 85% typing accuracy. Using standardize literacy exams, we found a positve trend of improved reading and writing among those of the lowest literacy level. Most importantly, many students were excited to have their own email accounts, using them to communicate with far-away friends and family, and to use the Internet to seek out news from their homeland.
It was exciting to be a part of introducing a simple technology - learning how to type - to a grateful and deserving group of elders. Endeavors like these are important because having competency of language can knock down community barriers and help our newest neighbors become confident, independent citizens.
Can We Keep America's Elderly Out of Hospitals?
Evelyn Kubat-Beers, a customer at Ecumen CountrySide in Owatonna, Minn., began experiencing chest pains in her apartment. Unable to stand, she couldn't reach a phone to call for help. However, QuietCare sensors alerted us to her predicament. Our colleagues in Owatonna got to her just before she collapsed. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, she was back in her own home. The technology helped alert us early. Without it, there’s a 
very good chance that Evelyn would not be alive today or would be in a hospital for an extended, very expensive stay.
This is one example of how senior services is increasingly playing a role in preventive health and keeping people out of hospitals. We're just nicking the surface of what we think can occur in improving quality of life and lowering expenses bymore smartly integrating health care and senior services.
For example, many senior services providers provide rehab services. Hospitals send the patient to us. We work with them on rehabilitation and the vast majority go home, not back to the hospital. So why couldn't senior care providers expand that to other areas of chronic care, diabetes, heart disease, etc.? It would continue to change the role of the nursing home and make it a vital part of integrative care, rather than increasing the extremely expensive, painstaking game of catch that occurs when a person bounces back and forth between a nursing home and a hospital emergency room.
Howard Gleckman, who blogs at Caring for Our Parents, addresses this topic further and shares several examples working to keep seniors out of hospitals.
The Future of Long-Term Care: What is its Place in the Health Reform Debate?
You can download Gleckman's paper here. One idea he raises is totally eliminating Medicaid in long-term care and replacing it with universal or near-universal long-term care insurance. He also smartly points to the need to integrate long-term care and medical care. If the Feds don't make long-term care a significant part of health care reform this time around, it's going to have to be states that forge the innovative solutions, because their budget expenditures are only growing on a parallel track with consumers who want something different.
Gleckman concludes:
The broader health reform debate now taking place in Washington creates a rare opportunity for policymakers to rethink the relationship between medical treatment and the long-term care needs of the chronically ill and those with disabilities. It is, for instance, an ideal environment to better coordinate long-term care with medical treatment (ECUMEN COULDN'T AGREE MORE). Broad health reform also presents an opportunity to review the bifurcated structure of Medicare and Medicaid that often works to the detriment of those eligible for both programs. It allows policymakers the chance to alter the balance between institutional and home- and community-based care. And, as policymakers attempt to redesign health coverage, so should they be considering improved payment mechanisms for long-term care. It is difficult to imagine a well-designed health reform that fails to address these issues.
AMEN!
Hey, Oprah, Stop Pushing Mare's Urine and Get Pro-Aging
Hi Oprah, drinking mare's urine won't help any of us live longer. Nor will having guests like Suzanne Somers on your show to talk about it's ability to slow aging.
Being the media magnate you are, you have to know that doing things like that only dents your image and broader appeal, and it will only generate more unflattering cover stories like the Newsweek one to the left, especially as we all age.
You had Somers, the former Three's Company roomie, share a stage with you and discuss how she smears progesterone and estrogen cream on her skin; how she daily uses a syringe to inject estrogen into her vagina and a whole host of other zaniness. None of that is going to restore Suzanne's hormone levels to her 30s or help her live to 110.
And then you said, "She might just be a pioneer." A pioneer of wackiness, maybe.
Oprah, you pride yourselves on your authenticity . . .Aging is real. We all do it. And there's a lot of good that comes with it. Embrace it. Please . . . get Pro-Age.
Changing Aging invites you to take a couple of seconds and watch gerontologist and friend of Ecumen Dr. Bill Thomas' Pro-Age plea to you here. Get him on your show. If you need others to help you get into the 21st Century on aging, call us. We'll help you out. Because the crazy talk you're promoting when it comes to aging isn't helping anyone.
Welcome to Ecumen's New Web Site
We've launched a new website that will continually evolve to better engage people, serve people, and connect our mission, vision and values with a world that is aging. If you get a second, we'd love your thoughts on the site.
If you go to our "contact us" page, you can now also follow Ecumen on Twitter and on the Ecumen YouTube channel.
Thanks to our web partner Azul 7 for their great work with us.