GBO NEWS: COVID-19 Elder Update–Trump Weakening Long-Term Care; Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults Report from the National Academies; “The Loneliness Paradox” video by Humorist Josh Kornbluth; “Leads From Liz” on LGBT Aging Sources; New Books: Kleinman’s Soul of Care, Talbot’s Heaven & Hell Stoke Story; Basting’s Creative Care; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 27th Year.
March 17, 2020 — Volume 27, Number 4
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. Send your news of important stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply sending a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, you’ll receive the table of contents in an e-mail, so just click through to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: The Luck of the Irish to You! (No, Green Beer Won’t Kill COVID-19.)
1. COVID-19 ELDER UPDATE: ***Do Media Pay Walls Block Vital Viral News?; *** Health Journalism 2020 Meeting Postponed; *** “Trump Admin Relaxing Oversight of Nursing Homes,” by Jess Drucker and Jessica Silver-Greenbaum, New York Times; *** “Seniors, Deemed Most Vulnerable to Virus, Grapple with ‘Social Distancing,” by Robert Weisman, Boston Globe; *** “How Well Does Your Nursing Home Fight Infections? Look It Up Here,” by Jordan Rau and Elizabeth Lure, Kaiser Health News; *** Plus KHN’s “ Look-Up: Check Out Infection Records Of 15,000 U.S. Nursing Homes”; *** “Gov’t Virus Testing Will Prioritize Medical Staff, Elderly ,” by Matthew Perrone, Associated Press.
2. ELDER LONELINESS—THE UNHEALTHY “SOCIAL DISTANCING”: ***Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults Report from the National Academies of Science Engineering & Medicine; *** “The Loneliness Paradox,” video by Josh Kornbluth, Citizen Brain for Global Brain Health Initiative.
3. LEADS FROM LIZ: Liz Seegert Reports on LGBT Aging Sources.
4. THE BOOKMOBILE: *** The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor (Viking), by Arthur Kleinman, MD; *** Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke, by David Talbot; *** Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia & Elder Care, by Anne Basting to be published in May.
5. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Finding New Terms for Old Age,” by Jeanette Leardi, Stria News;
*** “Medicare’s Private Option Is Gaining Popularity, and Critics,” by Mark Miller, New York Times;
** “Death As Performance Art: People Share Stories Of Loss On Stage” by JoAnne Mar, KALW Public Radio;
*** “Is Aging a Disease?” by Joelle Renstrom, Slate;
*** “Why the New ‘Public Charge’ Rule Could Hit Older Immigrants Hard,” by Jaya Padmanabhan,” PBS Next Avenue;
*** “The Key to Elder Abuse Prevention is Education,” Part 1 –by Judi L. Kanne, Atlanta Senior Life ; Part 2 — “Elder Abuse Can Be Close to Home”;
*** “Hidden and Buried and Locked,” by Cynthia McCormick, Cape Cod Times;
*** “‘Talking Out Loud’ About Sex After Loss,” by Tina Antolini, PBS Next Avenue;
*** “Researchers Look to Use Technology to Ease Burden of Caring for Relatives with Dementia,” by Luanne Rife, Roanoke Times;
*** “3 Degrees of Separation,” Part 1 — by Kate Ferguson, Part 2 — “Living Longer with HIV” in Real Health;
*** “Meals on Wheels,” by Cecilia Hernandez, in Spanish: Telemundo Oklahoma; ?Also, in English: Diverse Elders Coalition blog.
*** “Innovative Center Improves Alzheimer Awareness Through Contextual Research on Arab Americans,” by Hassan Abbas, Arab American News
1. COVID-19 UPDATE
The GBONews Gen Beat Goes On Following Our CORONA SPECIAL ISSUE, March 12. Below is a selection of story links specific to COVID-19 issues for older adults, with our nod to other sources, especially the Kaiser Health News “Morning Briefing” Another great source the Commonwealth Fund’s daily “Headline in Health Policy.”
First though, GBONews readers, a question, perhaps more like a media swab: Are news organizations you work with or use lowering the paywalls on their coronavirus coverage? At a time when conventions are being halted, restaurants are closing, hospitals are cancelling elective surgeries, and even Disneyland and Las Vegas are shutting down, the country needs the information stream more than ever. That includes journalists depending on access to wide-ranging coverage to keep their own stories up to date. Are major reporting sources, such as the Wall Street Journal, merely neglecting their automatic subscription systems, or cheering a subscription boost at this desperate time? (Are they or others seeing a subscription surge?) The usual “free” access, perhaps, to five articles a month, can be quickly used up as people click over to sidebars and return foe the latest.
It’s also frustrating to hit paywall pop-ups even on the first try peddling a $ .99 introductory subscription. Are any publishers or editors you deal with doing something to optimize access to vital viral information during this crisis?
*** Health Journalism 2020 Conference Postponed: AHCJ has socially distanced the annual conclave, previously slated for Austin, April 30-May 3, due to concerns over COVID-19. They announced, “AHCJ is trying to work with the conference hotel, JW Marriott in Austin, to determine if there is another set of dates later in the year that might work. Registrations will be honored for the next set of conference dates, or registrants will have the option of requesting a refund.”
*** “Trump Administration Is Relaxing Oversight of Nursing Homes,” by Jess Drucker and Jessica Silver-Greenbaum, New York Times (March 14, 2020): “The Trump administration has been working to relax regulations governing America’s nursing homes, including rules meant to curb deadly infections among elderly residents.
The main federal regulator overseeing nursing homes proposed the rule changes last summer, before the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vulnerability of nursing homes to fast-spreading diseases. The push followed a spate of lobbying and campaign contributions by people in the nursing-home industry, according to public records and interviews.
The story continues, “The proposed rules — which the agency is completing and has the power to enact — eliminate the requirement to have even a part-time infection specialist on staff. Instead, the Trump administration would require that anti-infection specialists spend ‘sufficient time at the facility.” The report quotes Anthony Chicotel, staff lawyer for the widely respected California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, calling the change “alarming.” He said, “It adds up to less time, less infection control.” said.
The piece notes, “Each year, about 380,000 residents are killed by infections, according to the Medicare agency. Failure to prevent them is also the leading cause of citations that state inspectors bring against nursing homes.” Further, they write, “In the case of nursing homes, relaxed regulations are projected to save the industry about $640 million a year, according to estimates from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.”
The story adds, “In its first year, the Trump administration changed how nursing homes were fined when they violated rules. . . . Under the Trump administration, the average fine imposed on a nursing home has dropped more than 30 percent from $41,260 to $28,405, according to an analysis of federal data by Kaiser Health News.
*** “Seniors, Deemed Most Vulnerable to Virus, Grapple with ‘Social Distancing,” by Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, (March 16): He writes, “’Social distancing,’ once considered a health hazard for older Americans, has suddenly become a necessity. . . . Massachusetts seniors were absorbing the stark message from the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization last week that older adults and those with serious medicinal conditions aren’t just more susceptible to contracting Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, but are more likely to die or be hospitalized.”
Weisman continues that some seniors “say they’re trying to balance competing worries. They’ve long been warned of the perils of loneliness and social isolation, which are particularly acute among older adults and linked to rising rates of stress, depression, and suicide. But skipping travel and social events is the surest way to avoid the virus, which in China, where it first appeared, killed 20 percent of those 80 and older who contracted it.”
*** “How Well Does Your Nursing Home Fight Infections? Look It Up Here,” by Jordan Rau and Elizabeth Lure, Kaiser Health News (March 13): KHN summarizes,“ Nursing homes have been faulted for failing to follow practices designed to prevent and control infections than for any other type of error. Such lapses have become matters of heightened concern with the spread of the coronavirus this spring, especially as the virus is a bigger threat to the elderly.”
*** “ Look-Up: Check Out Infection Records Of 15,000 U.S. Nursing Homes,” (March 13) from KHN, is theironline map showing “which of the 15,000 nursing homes in the U.S. have been cited for infection-control violations and how serious those infractions are.”
*** “Gov’t Virus Testing Will Prioritize Medical Staff, Elderly ,” by Matthew Perrone, Associated Press (March 15): The federal government’s effort to rapidly expand testing for the coronavirus will initially focus on screening health care workers and the elderly, Trump administration officials said Sunday. Broad-scale testing is a critical part of tracking and containing pandemics. But the U.S. effort has been hobbled by a series of missteps, including flaws with the testing kits first distributed by the federal government and bureaucratic hurdles that held up testing by private laboratories.”
2. LEADS FROM LIZ
Reporting on LGBT aging issues? Leave your assumptions at the door.
By Liz Seegert
No matter how often—or how infrequently— you report on LGBTQ issues, and especially generations-beat stories in this population, it’s good practice to dial back assumptions and stereotypes. Journalists who are not part of that community may go into a story with unconscious bias or preconceived notions. However well-meaning our intent, these may come across as insensitive or worse, inaccurate. Sometimes that may be reflected in the questions you ask, or the tone of the story.
For example, in health care settings, it is important to recognize that LGBTQ patients may have a broader definition of family support than is traditionally understood (e.g., in biologically rooted definitions of kin and family), write Penn State researchers Britney M. Wardecker, PhD and Jes L. Matsick, PhD in the Journal of Gerontological Nursing.
Although many in the LGBTQ community have warm relationships with their biological families, others do not, if they have a relationship at all. Reporting on issues such as “family caregivers,” may take on a whole different meaning. It could just as easily reference a person from their family of choice as a blood relative.
Some 5 million people who identify as LGBTQ are expected to live in the United States by the next decade; that figure is closer to 10 million if you count those who don’t identify this way but still engage in same-sex behaviors or relationships, according to researchers at Penn State University. LGBTQ people of all ages face discrimination in health care, mental health services, housing, employment and other civil and human rights violations. Stigma still runs rampant — and not just in “red” states. The American Psychological Association finds LGBTQ adults face more disparities in health care services and supports from providers and institutions. That may be staring to change, but not soon enough.
According to SAGE a leading advocacy from for LGBTQ older adults, they are also more socially isolated and lonely, especially those who take on the role of family caregiver. That leads to poorer mental and physical health. Some older LGBTQ adults are worried they’ll need to “go back into the closet” as Anna Gorman wrote for Kaiser Health News in 2016, when moving to an assisted living or nursing facility. It’s good to see developers building more LGBTQ senior-friendly housing, but there’s still a long way to go. Check out Lisa Esposito’s excellent 2017 article in U.S. News and World Report on “Aging While LGBT.” And just recently, Cynthia McCormick of the Cape Cod Times (also a Journalists in Aging Fellow), published
“Hidden and Buried and Locked,” about LGBT bereavement support groups providing solace and recognition of unacknowledged loss in their lives.
While the media’s coverage of LGBTQ issues in general, and of aging issues in this demographic, has improved over the years, Real Clear Politics found that since the 2016 election, coverage has slowed. It could be because of the non-stop roller coaster of other stories taking precedence; some fear it could be that certain media shy away from “controversial” topics in today’s politically fraught environment. Issues surrounding aging in the LGBT population need more reporting by mainstream media; right now, it’s difficult to find more than an occasional serious, reported story like this one in Boston magazine. So, if you’re looking around for story ideas to pitch an editor or producer, think about reporting on the unique challenges of aging in this particular demographic. Just be sure to keep leave your assumptions behind.
Here are some resources which can help inform your reporting:
- An AHCJ Tip Sheet (members only) by former Journalism in Aging Fellow Matthew Bajko, emphasizes that LGBT aging data is often missing from government statistics, and where else to turn for reliable information.
- This 2016 report from The Williams Institute, at UCLA Law School looks at the existing literature around LGBT older adults and offers recommendations for future efforts and policy needs.
- The Movement Advancement Project (MAP) has some excellent resources on challenges and issues facing aging LGBT adults. Note that some now may be out of date.
- This special supplemental issue of The Gerontologist from 2017 looks at the 2014 data from the National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study (NHAS), the largest national survey to date focused on the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults. Todd Kluss, GSA’s Director of Communications, can assist with obtaining specific articles.
“Leads From Liz” columnist Liz Seegert is program coordinator for GBONews.org’s parent, the Journalists Network on Generations. A New York-based freelance journalist, she is also editor of the Association of Health Care Journalists’ Core Topic section on Aging.
3. ELDER LONELINESS—THE UNHEALTHY “SOCIAL DISTANCING”
*** Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults: Opportunities for the Health Care System is a new benchmark report from the National Academies of Science Engineering & Medicine (Feb. 27, 2020). The 320-page federal study is available free online as a PDF (hard copies run $84).
Social isolation or loneliness may place elders at “higher risk of mortality, heart disease, and depression,” according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. But for people ages 50-plus, the U.S. health care system “remains an underused partner in preventing, identifying, and intervening for social isolation and loneliness.” For instance, says the report, a medical appointment or home health visit may provide rare social interactions for homebound older adults, who have no family, or don’t belong to community or faith groups.
“Loneliness and social isolation aren’t just social issues — they can also affect a person’s physical and mental health, and the fabric of communities,” said Dan Blazer, emeritus professor at Duke University, who chaired the committee that wrote the report. “Addressing social isolation and loneliness is often the entry point for meeting seniors’ other social needs — like food, housing, and transportation,” added Blazer, a pioneer in the development of geropsychiatry.
Blazer led a blue-ribbon committee—a list of topnotch sources for reporters—to develop the study, working with highly qualified research staff. The study, like other major National Academies reports, promises to become a key reference on the interaction between health care and mental health among older people for years to come.
The report outlines five goals for health care systems, and recommends ways to strengthen health-workforce education and training, “leveraging digital health and health technology, improving community partnerships, and funding research in understudied areas,” says a report summary.
The study also notes socially isolating factors that may aggravate the effects of living alone and the loss of loved ones. For example, “The issue may be compounded for LGBT, minority, and immigrant older adults, who may already face barriers to care, stigma, and discrimination.”
Social isolation and loneliness may also directly stem from chronic illness, hearing or vision loss, or mobility issues. In these cases, health care providers might be able to help prevent or reduce social isolation and loneliness by directly addressing the underlying health-related causes.
Aside from analyzing ways to improve clinical care delivery, the report examines factors in strengthening health professional education and training, especially incorporating social isolation and loneliness in their curricula. In reviewing the ethical implications of health technology, the study panel “found that 67 percent of the current assistive technologies in dementia care were designed without considering their ethical implications. Developers of technology should properly assess and test new innovations, taking into account privacy, autonomy, and the rural-urban digital divide.”
Further, the report reveals significant gaps in research on and evidence of the effectiveness of interventions in clinical settings and calls for more funding in these areas, particularly to “best meet the needs of LGBT and ethnic minority populations.”
The study was conducted by the Committee on the Health and Medical Dimensions of Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults and sponsored by the AARP Foundation. For more information, contact Stephanie Miceli, Media Relations Officer in National Academies Office of News and Public Information, 202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu.
*** “The Loneliness Paradox,” 10-min. video by Josh Kornbluth, Citizen Brain, Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI, March 5, 2020): This is the third in the series of short videos by the humorist and storyteller about emotional health, in his capacity as an
Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI). Based in San Francisco, he is among several artists and performers working along with research scientists selected for the international program to develop creative approaches for better public understanding of brain science, especially involving dementia research.
“Loneliness is a big deal,” says Kornbluth, who applies his signature style of wacky enthusiasm to explaining the complex interface between functions brain and the workings of the mind. “It can make us sick. It can make us age faster. It can even kill us.” What’s that? You’re not laughing, yet.”
Kornbluth digs down to the very worm of science with the help neuroscientists Aimee Kao, MD, PhD, who seeks lessons about the human mind in the cells of the common C. elegans worm. Kao, of the University of California, San Francisco, is exploring that connection between social isolation and mood disorders like depression. Also, prairie voles in the study actually can experience the pain of loss, just like humans, when they become socially isolated.
What’s the paradox? Kornbluth explains,” Loneliness is natural, even necessary, as it can motivate people to seek social connections.” Yet, chronic loneliness can become debilitating, if not fatal. He and colleagues at GBHI intend the video short to help loosen seniors from the stigma against talking to others, even health professionals, about their mental stress—before it sinks into clinical levels of physical or mental illness.
In the piece, Brian Lawlor, MD, Deputy Executive Director of GBHI, notes that although the health system is addressing public health policies for concerns, such as smoking and obesity, “the risk of dying from loneliness and isolation is about the same as light cigarette smoking and it’s probably greater than obesity. But we don’t have a public health approach or policy around loneliness.”
Kornbluth, recently dubbed a “Bay Area icon” by San Jose’s Mercury News, for his three-decade career of autobiographical solo performances and films, became interested in aging several years ago as a hospice volunteer. Links are available for all three videos, including “Age Without Ageism” (7 Mins.) and the absolutely fascinating, “The Empathy Circuit” (10 mins.), in which he begins, “There’s a tiny circuit that can save the world. It’s in your brain. It makes empathy.”
4. THE BOOKMOBILE
Review copies about aging stacking up on my desk this publishing season, turn their pages with a greater urgency and reflective depth than I’ve read for some time. Two new books, one from a physician’s perspective and the other from a stroke patient’s hospital-bed view, are powerful enhancements to the case for care over efficiency, so well documented in last year’s bestseller Elderhood, by Louise Aronson, MD.
Aronson called for a “care paradigm,” a “new” approach as ancient as Hippocrates. It begins with the outcome of healing and comfort, “rather than an approach that may or may not lead to that outcome.” Our medical system today, driven by time-is-money economics and the cool-eyed focus on scientific efficiencies, misses the point. She stressed, “You can have good medical science without care, but you cannot have good medical care with science. We very much need both—at all ages and stages of life.”
In The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor (Viking), psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman, MD, offers readers a richly evocative memoir of his life course from his rough youth to his prominence as pioneer in the anthropology of medicine and through his painful emotional growth as the caregiver for his wife and partner, Joan, in her decline from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
His account of caregiving for Joan, an internationally renowned expert on Chinese culture, as much a compelling portrayal of her vanishing vitality, after dementia began claiming her mind in her late 50s, as it is a deeply told a portrait as of a true life partnership.
Kleinman’s is among most insightful briefs to argue in recent years for refocusing U.S. health care. Reflecting on the wrenching U.S. health care debate, he write, “We have talked endlessly about the finances, politics, and systems of health as they affect insurance and medical treatment, without asking deeper questions about the care they are meant to provide. Our understanding of quality and measurement of outcomes fails to incorporate those dimensions of human experience that are what caregiving is about.”
New measures, Kleinman asserts, must include proper compensation and treatment for homecare workers, both the largely minority direct-care workforce and family caregivers, especially women, whose sacrifices are little acknowledged, much less paid for in the system.
In expressing doubt about whether the powers that be in United States will adopt the “radical” changes needed to embrace a caring system any time soon, Kleinman highlights existing models for caring that now function in certain pockets of our system. Care teams in have emerged in recent years in such areas as cancer treatment and palliative care that provide patients facing dire circumstances that kind of tender-loving personal attention and collaboration among medical, nursing and therapeutic professions that should permeate every corner of the system, including medical training.
*** One such life-enhancing team is at the heart of Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke, by bestselling author David Talbot (Chronicle Prism, 2020). This is a slim but often enthralling volume of only 174 pages, its title and cover art from William Blake, immerses readers in the aftermath of the ischemic stroke that powered him down and nearly killed him on Nov. 17, 2017.
The high-powered founder of Salon.com, Talbot found himself, at age 66, reduced in hours to a dependent “invalid,” acutely cognizant of Shakespeare’s description in As You Like It of the “last scene of all . . . mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
Talbot recounts the nearly fatal infarction and five-week hospitalization with a precision that enables readers to inhabit the physical and emotional nervous system and musculature of experiencing and surviving a stroke. Initially, he found, “My brain felt swirling and strangely muted at the same time. I was seeing double. The entire right side of my body—from the crown of my head to the toes on my foot—was partially paralyzed, and the limbs on that side of my body felt like a dead weight.” He goes on, “And yet I felt mysteriously elated. I was still alive.”
Gerontologists will nod at chapters and passages of life review, so commonly triggered by near-death events. In Talbot’s case, his life makes for fascinating reading. A child of Hollywood, David’s dad was actor Lyle Talbot, who appeared in more than 150 films and innumerable stage and television roles. (He was “Ozzie & Harriet’s” neighbor Joe.) David found his way to nonfiction, and son, Joe Talbot, revived the family’s fiction strain by writing-directing last year’s Sundance-winning feature, The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
Some of David’s heaven/hell tales involve his grappling post-stroke with losing his hyper-charged media identity. He’s the risk-master who quit his newspaper job in the mid-1990s to create Salon.com, on this newfangled thing called the internet (and once turning down an offer from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to buy the site). Among his books have been the bestsellers Season of the Witch, about the transformation of San Francisco into a progressive mecca in the wake of the Summer of Love, and Brothers about the Kennedy’s.
In Between Heaven and Hell,” he examines his stressful life as one perhaps destined for a stroke. Eventually, his path leads him to appreciate the benefits of slowing down, of treasuring the loving community around him, including the stroke unit team at Davies Medical Center in San Francisco. Increasingly, this decidedly non-religious media entrepreneur finds his way to spiritual solace in meditation, nature, his family, particularly his wife, Camille, and the wisdom of sages from Ram Das, Samuel Beckett, and George Harrison.
Reflecting on today’s Trump-ist turmoil, Talbot returns to a passage by Trappist monk and philosopher Thomas Merton. In 1963, Merton wrote, “He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world, without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions . . . .”
For Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke, by David Talbot, Chronicle Prism (January 14, 2020), request review copies or information from Jenn Jensen, Jennifer_Jensen@chroniclebooks.com; 415-537-4296.
*** Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia & Elder Care (HarperOne, May 2020) by MacArthur “genius” Anne Basting is her latest and most personal book about how she came to develop the TimeSlips theater program for awakening the creative energies very much remaining with dementia patients, through storytelling and active listening to the spirit of their words and images. GBONews will say more about this in the future, but for now, media reviewers can ask for an advance copy from Courtney Nobile at Courtney.Nobile@harpercollins.com.
5. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Finding New Terms for Old Age,” by Jeanette Leardi, Stria News (March 10, 2020): “Changing the words we use about the process of getting older may help change people’s biases against aging. And as the longevity economy takes hold, we need to find words that more accurately describe consumers’ experiences.”
*** “Medicare’s Private Option Is Gaining Popularity, and Critics,” by Mark Miller, New York Times (Feb. 21, 2020): Subhead: “As more Americans sign up for Medicare Advantage, detractors worry that it’s helping private insurers more than patients.” On retiring eight years ago, Ed Stein, former editorial cartoonist at the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News in Denver, chose a Medicare Advantage managed care plan, which can offer additional services, such as vision care, not available through original fee-for-service Medicare. Now accounting for 34% of Medicare plans, Advantage plans are projected to jump to 47% of enrollees by 2029. Critics of Advantage programs, which have been controversial in Republican and Democratic administrations, charge that the Trump has been especially, and perhaps illegally under federal law, promoting the private-insurance program.
Miller’s story goes on, “’When we talk about Medicare for all or public options,’ said Tricia Neuman, director of the Medicare policy program at the Kaiser Family Foundation, ‘people may not realize that we already have a Medicare program that is coming to be dominated by some very large private insurance companies.’”
She added, “’We know absolutely nothing about what people actually pay for services. . . If someone is really sick and uses a lot of covered services, they could pay less with traditional Medicare coupled with a Medigap policy than they would in a Medicare Advantage plan, even after taking into account Medigap premiums.”
Miller writes, “Defenders of Advantage programs point to studies that conclude they are outperforming original Medicare in areas like preventive care, hospital readmission rates, admissions to nursing homes and mortality rates.” However, he says, “Critics point to high levels of denial of care. Federal investigators reported in 2018 that Advantage plans had a pattern of inappropriately denying patient claims. The Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services found ‘widespread and persistent problems related to denials of care and payment in Medicare Advantage” plans.’”
Following are stories from this year’s Journalists in Aging Fellows Program of GBONews’s Journalists Network on Generations and The Gerontological Society of America. We’re grateful to these foundations for their support: The Silver Century Foundation, The Retirement Research Foundation; The Commonwealth Fund and The John A. Hartford Foundation.
*** “Death As Performance Art: People Share Stories Of Loss On Stage”, by JoAnne Mar, KALW San Francisco Public Radio, (March 5, 2020):
“Dealing with death is not easy. But some in the Bay Area are opening the conversation by stepping on stage and telling their stories of loss and mortality to an audience,” says the intro.
The story focuses on two theatrical programs. Stagebridge in Oakland, the nation’s oldest theater company of older adults, has been performing, “For Dyin’ Out Loud,” their “first storytelling event about life’s paths, including the journey to the end.” And San Francisco’s Lost Church theater hold “You’re Going To Die” open-mike nights for residents to share their stories of grief, sometimes for catharsis, and at others, for a shared laugh. (Dogs die, too.) The segment is the ninth entry in Mar’s “End-of-Life Radio Project.”
*** “Is Aging a Disease?” by Joelle Renstrom, Slate (March 2, 2020) Subhead: “Whether aging can be cured or not, there are arguments for thinking about it like a disease. But there are major pitfalls, too.” Renstrom begins, “The first depiction of humanity’s obsession with curing death is The Epic of Gilgamesh—which, dating back to at least 1800 B.C., is also one of the first recorded works of literature, period. … However, labeling aging itself as a disease is both misleading and detrimental. Pathologizing a universal process makes it seem toxic. In our youth-obsessed society, ageism already runs rampant in Hollywood, the job market, and even presidential races. And calling aging a disease doesn’t address critical questions about why we age in the first place. Instead of calling aging a disease, scientists should aim to identify and treat the underlying processes that cause aging and age-related cellular deterioration. Medical understanding of that cellular deterioration began in 1962, when Leonard Hayflick, professor of anatomy at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, made fundamental breakthroughs to understanding aging.”
*** “Why the New ‘Public Charge’ Rule Could Hit Older Immigrants Hard,” by Jaya Padmanabhan,” PBS Next Avenue (Feb. 24, 2020): subhead: “Devyani Dave immigrated from India to California in 1995 in her early 60s to live near her son and his family… But some immigration experts say the Trump administration’s new ‘public charge’ rule … will no longer welcome people in similar circumstances as Dave. That’s because, the analysts say, it will deem them likely to become liabilities for America. … But the Trump administration is altering the definition of public charge. Under the new rule, any person who uses designated benefits for 12 months in any 36-month period might be considered a public charge. And the list of benefits has expanded to include Medicaid, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as Food Stamps) and Section 8 housing assistance. … The story goes on, “The ‘totality of circumstances’ test will penalize people 62 years or older, ‘said Natalie Kean, senior staff attorney at Justice in Aging, . . . , making it ‘nearly impossible for older adults to pass the public charge test under the new criteria.”
“The Key to Elder Abuse Prevention is Education,” Part 1 –by Judi L. Kanne, Atlanta Senior Life (Feb. 3, 2020): “What reportedly happened to Frances Perkins, a Marietta woman in her 90s, was shameful. According to a 2017 story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), she had been well-off, but ended up living in squalor. The article says dead rats were in her home, she suffered from dementia and she was stripped of her finances by people who said they were helping her. . . . ‘They don’t use guns any longer,’ said Law Enforcement Coordinator Joe Gavalis, North Georgia Elder Abuse Task Force. . . . Some victims are frail, isolated and lonely, while others may be retired and eager to have someone to talk to.’ Today, scammers are looking for non-cash transactions, like electronic transfers and debit cards. ‘There’s a jury duty scam, the well-known ‘grandparent scam,’ romance, tech support and even IRS scams,’ Gavalis said.”
“Elder Abuse Can Be Close to Home” — Part 2 (March 2, 2020): “According to the [U.S.] Administration for Community Living, abusers generally use a pattern of coercive tactics, such as isolation, threats, intimidation, manipulation and violence to gain and maintain power over victims. . . . Seniors can be abused in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes, the abuse is physical. But abuse can also be emotional or financial. . . .Physical abuse is sneaky. It can show up unexpectedly in the finest of assisted living facilities and even specialized personal care homes. At times, a broken hip can be the first warning sign of inadequate staffing or lack of training.Georgians may not realize while nursing homes are tightly regulated, other types of senior living facilities may not be. “
Kanne highlights last year’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigative series, “Unprotected,” by Carrie Teegardinand Brad Schrade, which she says, provided “the public with behind-the-scenes insights” on Georgia’s private-pay, older adult industry.” Also, Kanne’s story noted, “Georgia’s Division of Aging Services has a link on their website, Aging.Ga.Gov, to report Elder Abuse. The organization says that at-risk adult abuse can take on varied forms,” such as scams and other types of financial exploitation.
*** “‘Talking Out Loud’ About Sex After Loss,” by Tina Antolini, PBS Next Avenue (Feb. 19, 2020): Subhead: “Author Joan Price’s new book focuses on intimacy after grief.” She writes “After her husband Robert’s death, Joan Price found herself confronted with a veritable mountain of self-help books about grieving. None of them touched on the subject that would preoccupy her for the coming decade: What about sex? Price is a sex educator, with an emphasis on older people, so perhaps she was primed for this question. But others have noticed this glaring absence in the literature of grieving, too. ‘The unspoken message, as I received it: keep your mouths shut about sex,’ writes Alice Radosh in Modern Loss: Candid Conversations about Grief. . . . Price is used to older people’s sex lives being ignored. . . . ‘We have internalized this ‘ick factor,’ she says. ‘We see ourselves as undesirable, as over the hill. . . .’ And therein lies Joan Price’s mission: to ‘talk out loud about senior sex,’ even in life’s hardest moments.’”
*** “Hidden and Buried and Locked,” by Cynthia McCormick, Cape Cod Times (Feb. 8, 2020): Subhead: LGBT bereavement support groups provide solace and recognition of unacknowledged loss. “When Cape snowbird Marie Seufert tells people in her Florida retirement community that she’s a widow, they sometimes ask when her husband died. ‘I say, No, it was my wife,’ said Seufert, 71, who lost Mary Sidlevicz, her spouse of nearly nine years, on Jan. 5, 2017… . Seufert said it was a relief when she found a bereavement support group that catered to the LGBT community when she returned to the Cape in May 2017 for Sidlevicz’s memorial service. ”
The story goes on, .”Standing grief support groups have been a feature of senior centers and hospice programs for decades. They are especially popular on the Cape, where the number of people 65 and older — 30.6% — tops every other county in the state… . For Paul Glass, 70, of East Falmouth, president of the Boston-based LGBT Elders of Color, emotionally surviving the loss of two partners during the AIDS epidemic took a monumental amount of inner work.”
*** “Researchers Look to Use Technology to Ease Burden of Caring for Relatives with Dementia,” by Luanne Rife, Roanoke Times (Feb. 2, 2020): “Researchers are confident they can put sensors in a home; train them to pick up on light, sound and temperature clues that precipitate difficult behavior in someone with dementia; and give a heads-up to caregivers that agitation is coming. What they don’t know is whether giving suggestions to caregivers on how best to keep their relatives calm will relieve the stress of caring for a spouse or parent who is unable to communicate their distress. ‘We might reduce agitation but still not reduce the burden of care giving,’ said Martha Anderson, a professor at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and one of the investigators on a three-university research project that is looking at developing an in-home product to ease the stress for families caring for a relative with dementia.”
*** “3 Degrees of Separation,” Part 1 — by Kate Ferguson, Real Health (Jan. 31, 2020): Q&A interviews with three individuals “who are united by their shared experiences as older women living with HIV.” Melanie Reese, 67, 20-year survivor, Executive Director, Older Women Embracing Life (OWEL), Community research advisory council member, Johns Hopkins Institute of Clinical and Translational Research; Michelle Lopez, 53, 29-year survivor, Case worker, Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), HIV/AIDS activist and advocate; and Cecilia Chung, 54, director of evaluation and strategic initiatives, The Transgender Law Center Community activist and advocate for transgender people.
Part 2 — “Living Longer with HIV” (Jan. 31, 2020): Subhead: Antiretroviral therapy helped people with the virus add years to their lives, but now scientists must address other issues of longevity. “In 2015, one decade after investigators looked at nearly 1,000 older adults living with HIV in New York City, researchers organized a successor study, the Research on Older Adults with HIV Study (ROAH 2.0), in several sites across the United States. Findings from the first part of the study documented the challenges of older adults living with the virus in San Francisco. Here Real Health spoke with senior research scientist Mark Brennan-Ing, PhD, from the Brookdale Center for Healthy Aging at Hunter College, a part of the City University of New York, who was a co-principal investigator on the ROAH 2.0 team.
Also, Kate Ferguson published related versions of these articles in Real Health’s” sister magazine, POZ (for HIV “positive”). Titled “Embracing Life: New challenges for women aging with HIV require more research,” the story was featured in POZ’s March 2020 print issue and online edition. View a digital version of the print magazine at https://tinyurl.com/tvw37ss.
*** “Meals on Wheels,” by Cecilia Hernandez, Telemundo Oklahoma (Jan. 31, 2020): “Ser independiente es algo importante en el ser humano desde que somos niños hasta que envejecemos. Afortunadamente hay organizaciones que ayuden a personas a quedarse mas tiempo en el lugar que llaman hogar. Si vive en Norman y necesita ayuda para obtener comida y se le dificulta salir de su vivienda porque tiene alguna discapacidad o enfermedad puede comunicarse con Meals on Wheels marcando al (405) 321-7272. Si esta en Oklahoma City hay una programa similar que se llama La puerta de Oro y su numero de contacto es (405) 235-4243. En Edmond tienen el programa Mobile Meals que pueden contactar marcando al (405) 341-3111. Archive video with English subtitles. The story also ran in English on the Diverse Elders Coalition blog.
*** “Innovative Center Improves Alzheimer Awareness Through Contextual Research on Arab Americans,” by Hassan Abbas, Arab American News (Jan. 18, 2020): “The Michigan Center for Contextual Factors in Alzheimer’s Disease is a newly formed Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR), housed at the University of Michigan and funded by the National Institute on Aging. . . . The center practices an innovative approach to ADRD-related social and behavioral science research among Middle Eastern/Arab American (ME/AA) communities, connecting factors, such as social and economic disparities to its aims of improving care-giving, research on lowering risk factors and, more importantly, dispelling stigma regarding Alzheimer’s disease. It also tries to develop a more diverse research workforce dedicated to healthy aging. Stigma around the disease exists in part because of the lack of public awareness and understanding of the condition. . . . factors, especially for minority populations, MCCFAD Director Dr. Kristine Ajrouch told The Arab American News.
“MCCFAD focuses on how social and economic disparities affect inequalities in health across the lifespan, specifically in aging, cognitive decline and dementia.‘ Culturally-sensitive care emphasizes balancing informal and formal care to best meet family needs that are consistent with cultural values,’ Ajrouch added. ‘The caregiver role is associated with burden and adverse effects on psychological and physical health.”
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