GBO NEWS: Oldest President and Aging; COVID Isolation vs. Safety; Bold Proposal in Social Security Book; PLUS Robotic Pets; Arab American Elders in Pandemic; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 28th Year.
March 25, 2021 — Volume 28, Number 3
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. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. 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: Getting Back to NORMAL – Oh-Oh!
1. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Changes to Nursing Home Care Slow COVID Infection Rates,” by Lara Salahi, WickedLocal.com;
*** SERIES – Part 1 — “Exception to the Rule,” by Kate Fergusson, POZ Magazine; * Part 2 — “How Some HIV Controllers Contain the Virus”;
*** SERIES — Part 1 – “Ageism in the Workplace – Can President Biden Change the Course?” by Diane Eastabrook, PBS Next Avenue; * Part 2 – “Ageism in the Workplace: Companies Breaking the Mold,” by PBS Next Avenue;
*** “Virginia Tech researchers seek to understand effects of caregiving on extended family,” by Luanne Rife, Roanoke Times;
*** “Robotic Pets Provide Companionship to Minnesota Seniors: ‘Kitty Is There,’” by Kevyn Burger, Minneapolis Star Tribune;
*** “Nurses Feel Emotional Impact of COVID-Related Senior Losses,” by Julia Yarbough, KHSL/KNVN Action News video and posted story (Chico/Sacramento Television);
*** “Nursing Homes Balance COVID-19 Prevention, Social Isolation,” by Cynthia McCormack, Cape Cod Times/Gannett;
*** “Study Seeks to Understand Arab American Health During COVID-19,” by Hassan Abbas, Arab American News.
2. GOOD SOURCES
*** “California Has a Master Plan for Aging. Now What?” by Richard Eisenberg, Managing Editor, PBS Next Avenue (Will the Plan outlive Gavin Newsom’s governorship?);
*** The Gerontological Society of America Journal’s publish new scientific articles on COVID-19.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE: ***Social Security Works for Everyone! Protecting and Expanding the Insurance Americans Love and Count On, by Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson, The New Press, 2021 with Foreword by Pulitzer Prize–winner, David Cay Johnston.
1. THE STORYBOARD
Will the oldest U.S. president act to combat ageism in the workplace? How are older HIV-positive Black adults in New York coping with the disease? Robotic pets in Minnesota! What are nursing homes doing to balance elder loneliness with COVID-19 safety measures in Massachusetts? What’s been the toll on nurses as they’ve lost patients to the pandemic in California? And what is research revealing about how Arab-American families in the Detroit area are struggling in the wake of the coronavirus?
Those are some of the questions broached in recent stories by our 2021 Journalists in Aging Fellows since the February issue of GBONews. Following are highlights from and links to articles produced by this year’s Fellows. The program is a collaboration between GBONews’s publisher, the Journalists Network on Aging, with the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). Now in its 11th year, it has included 185 reporters from both the mainstream and ethnic news media in the United States, plus some past fellows from Canada. Ethnic-media stories have appeared in Spanish, Chinese and other languages with English translations available, many also cross-posted on the DiverseEldersCoalition.org website. A complete roster of story headlines and links is posted on the GSA website.
The generations beat rolls on with these stories, and more:
*** “Changes to Nursing Home Care Slow COVID Infection Rates,” by Lara Salahi, WickedLocal.com (March 9, 2021): She writes, “Fears of COVID-19 infections in nursing homes may be subsiding as more facilities employ the trifecta of increased staffing, surveillance testing and vaccinations. Christine Tardiff, chief operations officer and vice president of Clinical Services at Elder Services of the Merrimack Valley and North Shore [in Massachusetts], says just a year ago, the agency had to field through the heightened fears from families who were reluctant to place their loved ones in a nursing home.”
Salahi reports that although Massachusetts has had “lower than the national average” cases in nursing facilities, they nearly tripled between November and December 2020, due partly to the holiday season. In December 2020, nearly 6% of the state’s nursing home residents contracted COVID-19, according to AARP’s COVID-19 nursing home dashboard data, which showed the average age for coronavirus hospitalizations was 70, also the median age of nursing home residents.
Salahi’s piece continued, “Congregate care settings, including nursing homes, have been a hotbed for COVID infections due partly to spotty testing of staff and residents, and inconsistent contact tracing and isolation measures to keep the virus from spreading early in the pandemic. . . . Effective infection control requires test results to be obtained in less than 24 hours. In August and September 2020, less than a quarter of nursing facilities across the nation had a turnaround time of less than a day,” according to analysis in the Journal of American Medical Association. A major concern has been low staffing levels.”
The story adds, “To ease concerns, . . . nursing homes should be transparent in their safety protocols and procedures. Families, too, should look beyond what nursing homes endured in the early months of the pandemic and inquire on what they are doing today.”
*** SERIES – Part 1 — “Exception to the Rule,” by Kate Fergusson, POZ Magazine(Feb. 15, 2021): She wrote in POZ (for positive), “A few months ago, Loreen Willenberg stood on the cusp of launching the website for her landscape design business. You could say the moment marked a return to her roots. In 2007, Willenberg, now age 66, walked away from her career as a landscaper and dedicated herself full-time to HIV research and advocacy. True, she had taken on this work for deeply personal reasons and found it immensely satisfying. But eventually, the pull of her innate and instinctive passion for working with the earth became too insistent to ignore.” Willenberg, now 66, tested HIV positive in 1992.
The story notes later, “Advocacy is also woven into Willenberg’s DNA. ‘I was profoundly touched to learn my efforts to connect members of the HIV controller community to the study in Boston helped the researchers make their recent discovery,’ she says. ‘The wish in my heart is that in my lifetime with what they learned about my case and those of the other 63 elite controllers, that this can be translated into a way to help other people’s immune systems evolve to the point where HIV in the body is destroyed, leaving individuals with no trace of the virus.’”
* Part 2 — “How Some HIV Controllers Contain the Virus,” (Feb. 15, 2021): Kate Fergusson examines the “small subset of people living with HIV are able to control viral replication without antiretroviral treatment.” One in Sacramento is “Loreen Willenberg, a 66-year-old landscape designer with HIV, is among a group referred to as “elite controllers,” individuals who aren’t on antiretroviral medications, have no symptoms of illness and possess a robust immune system with disease-fighting CD4 and CD8 T-cells that are highly active against HIV. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), elite controllers account for less than 0.5% of people living with HIV.”
Fergusson goes on, “In a recent study, researchers shed light on how Willenberg and about 60 other elite controllers keep HIV in check. In these individuals, HIV’s genetic blueprint is locked away in the genome of resting immune cells in such a way that it can’t be used to produce new virus. The researchers were unable to find any intact HIV after looking in more than 1.5 billion of her cells. Scientists think that in elite controllers, HIV frequently occupies genetic areas they call “gene deserts” that don’t allow the virus to replicate. The HIV genes there are only inactive viral DNA. . . . The question now is whether scientists can develop treatments to enable the millions of typical people with progressive HIV to become more like elite controllers.”
*** SERIES– Part 1 – “Ageism in the Workplace – Can President Biden Change the Course?” by Diane Eastabrook, PBS Next Avenue (Feb. 25, 2021): Subhead: “Why some labor analysts say it’s beyond time to take action.” The article notes that at 78, Biden is the oldest person ever elected to the nation’s highest office. Will it make a policy difference, though? Eastabrook writes, “When it comes to the workforce, maybe, but maybe not.”
She continues, “Nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce is 55 and older. That cohort is expected to increase to a third of the workforce in the next decade. Yet getting jobs and keeping them has grown harder for older workers in recent years. The pandemic has made things even worse. In recessions dating back to 1948, older workers were less likely to get axed from jobs compared to younger ones due to their seniority. But that’s been changing.
“Last April, when coronavirus cases spiked across the U.S., the unemployment rate for people 55 and older was 13.6% versus 12.8% for people aged 25 to 54. By the end of the year, the jobless rate had come down for both groups, but was still slightly higher for those over age 55. Teresa Ghilarducci, a labor economist with the New School of Social Research and a Next Avenue Influencer in Aging, believes some employers are using the pandemic to shed more experienced, higher-paid older workers.”
The story examines needed changes in the 53-year-old Age Discrimination in Employment Act that would address court challenges that have weakened protections over the year.
*Part 2 – “Ageism in the Workplace: Companies Breaking the Mold,” by Diane Eastabrook, PBS Next Avenue (Feb. 26, 2021): Subhead: “While some businesses are showing older workers the door, these embrace them.” The story looks at such models corporate programs as the Returning Retiree Program at Michelin, the FlexRetirement Program at Herman Miller, and the U Work and U Renew Programs at Unilever.
* SERIES — Part 2 – “Ageism in the Workplace: Companies Breaking the Mold,” by Diane Eastabrook, PBS Next Avenue (Feb. 26, 2021): Subhead: “While some businesses are showing older workers the door, these embrace them.” The story looks at such models corporate programs as the Returning Retiree Program at Michelin, the FlexRetirement Program at Herman Miller, and the U Work and U Renew Programs at Unilever.
*** “Virginia Tech Researchers Seek to Understand Effects of Caregiving on Extended Family,” by Luanne Rife, Roanoke Times (Feb. 14, 2021): She reports that Virginia Tech researchers, Karen Roberto and Tina Savla, of Tech’s Center for Gerontology, along with a physician Aubrey Knight, who specializes in memory decline have won a five-year, $2.14 million grant from the National Institute on Aging “to look at whether caregivers of people with dementia face additional challenges if they are extended family members rather than spouses or adult children.” The article explains, “Tech professors and Dr. Knight think that grandchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings and stepchildren might encounter different barriers, but they are not sure since there hasn’t been much research on the topic.”
Rife reports, “Virginia’s Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Commission in 2019 estimated 150,000 Virginians were living with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. That number is expected to rise to about 190,000 by 2025.” She adds, “Once the pandemic is over, Roberto and Savla plan to visit churches and community meetings across the state to recruit families.”
*** “Robotic Pets Provide Companionship to Minnesota Seniors: ‘Kitty Is There,’” by Kevyn Burger, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Feb. 16, 2021)” Subhead: “A new breed of electronic cats and dogs exhibit lifelike behaviors.” Now in a memory facility, Darlene Schmidt was given kitty that’s “a robotic pet, one of a new breed of electronic cats and dogs that can pant, yawn, whine and wag; some even have an audible heartbeat. They have been designed specifically for older people, especially those with Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. The lifelike animals can be soothing and can provide much needed companionship or a distraction from dislocation or pain. . . . Robotic pets offer an almost-real response to light, touch and sound.
“Employing motion detector technology, electronic animals are expressive; their software lets them turn their heads and make authentic noises, barking or mewing to react to their environment. . . . The story adds, “ For family caregivers and senior housing managers, offering the comfort of animatronic pets is hassle-free. Unlike meeting the demands of flesh-and-blood animals, the robotic ones don’t require vaccines, never have to go to the vet and don’t shed.”
The piece adds that a 2019 analysis of studies concluded the animals are useful tools that “significantly” decrease common behavioral and psychological symptoms associated with dementia, especially agitation and depression. “This is an inexpensive intervention that doesn’t involve medication,” said Lisa Wiese, professor at Florida Atlantic University’s college of nursing.
*** “Nurses Feel Emotional Impact of COVID-Related Senior Losses,” by Julia Yarbough, KHSL/KNVN Action News video (2:37 mins) and posted story (Chico/Sacramento TV, Feb. 2, 2021): Subhead: The coronavirus has claimed the lives of thousands of seniors. Those caring for our most vulnerable are feeling the emotional impacts of those deaths. The story quotes Jennie Chin Hansen, RN, former national president of AARP and a member of the recent Task Force for California’s Master Plan for Aging: “She says the challenges nurses face will increase in the coming years not only from the long-term emotional impacts from the pandemic, but also shouldering the increased demands of caring for an aging population.’ Likely 40% will have dementia or cognitive loss and that requires a level of training and education and skill-building that will be important to do over this next decade.’”
Yarbough also interviewed Dr. Toni Miles is an epidemiologist with the University of Georgia. “She studies bereavement, with much of her work in nursing homes. ‘The people who work there themselves are dying of COVID, so you’ve got a double-whammy,’ explains Dr. Miles. ‘You’ve got people who cared for the seniors and when the seniors die they are injured in the process. Right now it’s hitting people the hardest who are connected to these older adults.’
*** “Nursing Homes Balance COVID-19 Prevention, Social Isolation,” by Cynthia McCormack, Cape Cod Times/Gannett, Jan. 4, 2021: “As the spiraling cases of COVID-19 shut Cape nursing homes — including Liberty Commons — to indoor visitors, fears of a return to the social isolation experienced during the spring pandemic peak loom in the minds of residents and their families. Social isolation can be a threat to physical and mental well-being, according to experts in elder health care. ‘I call her every day,’ Skidmore said about her mother . . . , who turns 99 next month.’”
McCormack, who previously reported on the high number of lower-income retirees in Cape Cod, went on, “The community spread of COVID-19 is forcing public health officials and nursing home operators to strike an uneasy balance between protecting the state’s most vulnerable residents from infection while attempting to meet their social and mental health needs. Long-term care residents have borne the brunt of the pandemic, making up about 60% of statewide fatalities from COVID-19, with most of the deaths occurring this past spring.”
The piece quotes geriatrician Joanne Lynn, MD, “Nursing home visitor suspensions constitute a second epidemic — a silent epidemic of social isolation. Lynn, of the Altarum Institute’s MediCaring program and health and aging policy fellow in the office of Congressman Thomas Suozzi, said, “We did not ask, as a country, what elderly people thought of being isolated by virtue of their age and susceptibility to the disease of coronavirus.”
Lynn continued, “Even if the outcome wouldn’t be any different, it is important to include elderly people in the conversation.” She wrote a report released in November titled “Elder Care and the End of Life in the U.S.’” that said COVID-19 has made end of life even grimmer for many. The percentage of people in long-term care who ate meals in the dining room dropped from 69% to 13% during the pandemic, while the percentage of those who went outside for fresh air one or more times a week declined from 83% to 28%. ‘Elders are dying from meaninglessness,’ Lynn wrote. She said 76% felt lonelier than before.”
*** “Study Seeks to Understand Arab American Health During COVID-19,” by Hassan Abbas, Arab American News (Dec. 24, 2020). Cross-posted on the Diverse Elders Coalition website: http://bit.ly/3q8yVeY . “New research seeks a better understanding of how social and behavioral aspects of everyday life affect the health and wellness of those aged 65 and older in Metro Detroit. Led by Prof. Kristine Ajrouch, PhD, who heads the University of Michigan’s Center for Contextual Factors in Alzheimer’s Disease, the study is examining the social components of health among older Arab Americans, often overlooked in research. The survey interview will be done by phone, due to COVID-19 and will include questions about health and wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We realized that with COVID-19 there came a lot of challenges, and there is some preliminary evidence that suggests that COVID-19 actually has an effect on cognitive health,” Ajrouch [said].
The survey will collect data from Arab Americans, Blacks and Whites living in Metro Detroit. The survey will be the first for which the University of Michigan is hiring all Arab Americans to conduct the interviews, something Ajrouch is excited about.
She said underrepresentation of Arab Americans in census data has been a past barrier to research. “There is a difficulty in identifying Arab Americans, just because Arab Americans are considered White,” Ajrouch said. “When we are recruiting individuals into a study, and are looking at the racial and ethnic composition of our sample (in census data), the term Arab American is not included in the official racial and ethnic category.”
And now a word—and great new stories – with support from our sponsors. The 2021 Journalists in Aging Fellows Program is made possible by the following foundations: The Silver Century Foundation, The RRF Foundation (formerly Retirement Research Foundation; The Commonwealth Fund, The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Gannett Foundation.
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2. GOOD SOURCES
*** GBONews.com also notes this item by former Journalists in Aging Fellow, Richard Eisenberg, Managing Editor of the PBS Next Avenue website: “California Has a Master Plan for Aging. Now What?” (Feb 23, 2021): “When California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in January 2019, he announced the state would embark on creating a Master Plan for Aging. Now that the ambitious 44-page Master Plan for Aging has been released, I wanted to find out what will keep it from sitting on a shelf, like so many other blue-ribbon government reports. After speaking with numerous people who helped create California’s Master Plan for Aging (government officials, academics and nonprofit leaders) and reading analyses from others, I came away pleasantly surprised about the blueprint’s prospects to ‘build a California for All Ages by 2030.’”
GBONews recommends that reporters look at this concise article (and the Master Plan itself), as a national tip sheet for story ideas. For instance, the section on health includes increased broadband access, something most people would associate with elders’ wellbeing, but think of telemedicine and suburban/rural health. And think further of what’s kept the United States from having the kind of universal broadband available in other advanced economies.
In fact, I learned, some of its team’s recommendations have already taken effect. For example, the state health department revised its pandemic triage rules to avoid prioritizing younger people with COVID-19 over older ones.”
The story goes on, “Other recommendations from the Master Plan for Aging are in the works for 2021 and 2022. . . . The number of Californians age 60 and older is due to nearly double from roughly 6 million in 2010 to about 11 million in 2030 (a quarter of the state’s population). California currently has the second highest average life expectancy in the nation (81.9 years). And one in five older adults in the state is living in poverty, one of the highest rates in the country. Older adults also comprise the fastest growing group of homeless people in California, said Fernando Torres-Gil, a UCLA professor of social welfare and public policy and Master Plan for Aging team member.”
The piece continues, “We did both a 10-year vision of where we want to be and a two-year work plan to be really specific about what we can do right now,” California Department on Aging Director Kim McCoy Wade told me. “Some of these things are going to take ten years and even more; we’re reimagining health care and housing.”
Wade added later in the story, “We really framed it as a ‘California for all ages.’ Not as this [aging] deficit and decline.” Eisenberg noted, “Only four other states — Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas — have made their own Master Plan for Aging, according to The SCAN Foundation, which works to transform care for older adults.”
The article quotes Master Plan committee members:
Kevin Prindiville, executive director of Justice in Aging, who worked on the Master Plan: “Unfortunately, in California and in many other places, the strategic thinking and strategic investments haven’t been made to really prepare for the growing need.”
Paul Irving, chairman of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, said document is “frankly in many ways, an overdue acknowledgement of the need to prioritize healthy aging, financial wellness, health care, caregiving, housing and other issues.”
Eisenberg continues, “Newsom, who is fighting an effort to recall him by Republicans and some small business owners, just released a 2021-2022 budget with specific earmarks for aging issues, such as $5 million for Master Plan for Aging leadership and operations; $15 million for Alzheimer’s research, caregiver and provider training and an education campaign and $17.5 million for senior nutrition.”
The Master Plan’s covers five goals for the California Master Plan addressed five main goals, housing, health and continuing care, inclusion and equity, caregiving and aging affordably, and they include many angles for journalists – as well as notable omissions. Under caregiving, for instance, Eisenberg cites such important areas included in the Master Plan as greater attention to dementia care and the long-term care workforce. Yet, he adds, “What the Master Plan for Aging didn’tpropose, however, was a way to help middle-class Californians afford long-term care.”
What about the Newsom recall effort, you may ask? GBO’s California-based editor suggests you not hold your breath. Barring another scandal for the youthful governor with his sexy touch of gray at the temples, the campaign so far has emerged with obvious GOP partisanship, not popular with voters, and so far there’s no Arnold Schwarzenegger in the wings set to announce his candidacy on late night TV. As for Newsom’s Master Plan on Aging, I’ll exhale (but hopefully) for action on that one. Meanwhile, let’s see how long it takes President Biden to get moving on his caregivers proposal.
*** The Gerontological Society of America’s highly cited, peer-reviewed journals are continuing to publish scientific articles on COVID-19, and all are free to access.
3. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Social Security Works for Everyone! Protecting and Expanding the Insurance Americans Love and Count On, by Nancy J. Altman and Eric R. Kingson, The New Press, 2021. The complexity and nuances of the progressive view of social insurance doesn’t get any more authoritative than this. In his foreword to the book, Pulitzer Prize–winning economics journalist and self-described lifelong Republican, David Cay Johnston writes, “Altman and Kingson cut through the fog of calculated confusion and outright lies about Social Security.”
Being released in paperback on April 13, this little book is more than an update of the authors’ first 2015 edition, Kingson told GBONews. Generations beat journalists covering issues of income and health insecurity, he said, will find a far more expansive call for strengthening Social Security than in the first edition. More than their earlier arguments for incremental improvements, such for women, minorities and lower-income Americans, but with “what we feel is a bold prescription for change. The COVID-19 pandemic particularly exposed multiple crises for people approaching or already in retirement, beyond the already-eroding sums of their Social Security retirement payments.”
Beyond their case for increasing monthly benefits, the authors detail why the country needs to enact universal health care coverage, national paid family leave, sick leave and long-term care protections across the age span. And they propose how to pay for it.
To fiscal conservatives charging “tax-and-spend Democrats,” Kingson reminded in a phone call, “The Republicans had their chance only four years ago and promptly gave their billionaire friends almost $2 trillion in tax breaks. Even so, we’re now starting to hear them revive their old warnings of too much deficit spending. Really. Maybe we should talk about tax-cut-and-squander Republicans.”
The co-authors have been behind-the-scenes experts on social insurance since both staffed the 1983 bipartisan Greenspan Commission that saved Social Security from immanent bankruptcy. Altman, Who was a staff attorney for Alan Greenspan on the commission, is the author of The Battle for Social Security. Kingson, a professor of social work at Syracus University, was a policy advisor for both the 1983 and 1994 commissions on Social Security reform. That is, they were in the rooms where the key debates happened.
Reporters should be aware that Kingson and Altman have been among the principal influencers on economic policy initiatives for the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. They also were among the sharpest critics of the Obama Administration’s centrist “Grand Bargain,” the president’s offer to slow the growth of Social Security as a compromise ultimately rejected by the GOP. Obama’s actions then led Altman and Kingson to found the Washington advocacy group, Social Security Works in 2010, along with the Strengthen Social Security Coalition, a network of over 300 state and national organizations in aging, labor and social welfare.
Kingson added that he feels positive about the initial leadership of President Joe Biden. “He’s a decent man and his calm approach is exactly what the nation needs at this point.”
However, reporters on the watch for where the lines in the sand will be drawn between the progressive and established Democrats wings on how best to secure the nation’s future would do well to examine this book.
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