The World Health Organization launched the Age-Friendly Communities Initiative in 2006, with the laudable goal of making communities throughout the world accessible and safer for seniors. The first step was to gather information from older residents, service providers, and other groups from a total of 33 cities worldwide. They identified eight key areas communities can […]
You have heard the old adage “Rags to Riches to Rags”, or “Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in three generations”. It is not just a dynamic of western culture; it is actually an old Chinese proverb “Rice paddies to Rice paddies in three generations.” Breaking down the saying (1) The first generation strives to better themselves, so […]
More than 15 years after it was passed, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) — also glowingly or disparagingly referred to as “Obamacare,” depending on a person’s politics — has become a pawn, another arrow in the arsenal of weapons brandished between liberals and conservatives, legislators of all stripes, consumers and insurers. And […]
The Age-In. It was something of a flashback — modeled after the Teach-Ins of the 1960s, which were characterized by peer-to-peer talking and listening sessions rather than the more formalized “I’m-gonna-lecture-and-you’re-gonna-listen” teacher/student set-up. The event commemorated the 10-year anniversary of At Home With Growing Older, a group with a diverse membership of architects, advocates, social […]
Nursing home residents and their advocates have scored some improvements in the types and quality of care provided. But in many facilities, the caring concept of “nursing” and “home” are still hard to come by. While lauding the good changes, Eric Carlson, directing attorney of the advocacy group Justice in Aging, describes the 10 most common complaints […]
Updated September 2025 Most people in the U.S., where the average life expectancy is 78 years old, live about 20% of their lives with a chronic disease of aging such as osteoarthritis, Type II diabetes, cancer, heart attack, stroke, and macular degeneration. But the brainiacs at the Buck Institute for Age Research, based in Novato, […]
Robert Kriegel says it was a hefty hike of 5.5% in fees at his lifecare community in San Francisco that provided the impetus. A small group of residents who played bridge together there let their ire fly freely while conversing over the cards and decided to find out whether other residents were also upset that […]
There is no shortage of advice these days about how to deal with the “problem behavior” of people who have dementia, many of whom get more resistant as their conditions decline. Many of those urgings seem impossible to follow; some of them too wonky, too time-consuming or too expensive. In fact, the best advice may […]
Old age is getting younger. Thanks to a decrease in smoking, improved healthcare, safer working conditions, and widespread childhood vaccinations, life expectancy in the United States increased during most years after World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. The increase in American life expectancy flattened in the mid-2010s because of the opioid epidemic and […]