GBO NEWS: Who Lives to 100?; Reporting Fellowship Deadline; Latinx Elders and Pandemic Care; Social Security vs. Military Bloat; Senior Mover’s Moving Memoir: Nobelist Kahneman Says Experience Matters; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 28th Year.
June 24, 2021 — Volume 28, Number 6
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. 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: Rank Your Choices: Colbert, Kimmel, Noah, Bee, Fallon, a Book.
1. THE STORYBOARD – CENTENARIAN STYLE: *** NYT’s Jane Brody on Super-Agers; ***AARP’s Ethel blog on “Aiming for 100”; *** And Centenarian Researcher Dr. Tom Perls.
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE: ***Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship Deadline, Oct. 1.
3. MORE STORYBOARD:
*** “Tackling Latino Health, Caregiving and Housing Is Key as Older Population Grows,” by Laura Castañeda, NBC News/Latino;
*** “Diary Of A Pandemic: The Caregivers,” by Jenny Manrique, in Spanish, “Diario de una Pandemia: Las Cuidadoras” both on National Association of Hispanic Journalists Palabra news site;
*** “Social Security Versus National Security: Whose Entitlement Really Makes Us Safer?” by Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch;
4. THE BOOKMOBILE: ***Squint: Re-Visioning the Second Half of Life by Margit Novak; ***Love After 50: How to Find It, Enjoy It, and Keep It by Francine Russo ***Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Nobelist Daniel Kahneman and his advice to Krista Tippett that experience matters.
5. GOOD SOURCES:
*** “Evaluating Medicare Through the COVID-19 Looking Glass,” Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point blog;
*** “Investing in Caregivers: An Essential Resource for Our Nation,” RRF Foundation Issue Brief;
*** “Workforce Issues in Long-Term Care,” special issue of The Gerontologist, Gerontological Society of America;
*** CA Gov. Newsom’s 2021-22 Budget: “Impact on California’s Older Adults, People With Disabilities, and Family Caregivers,” SCAN Foundation analysis.
1. THE STORYBOARD – CENTENARIAN STYLE
*** “The Secrets of ‘Cognitive Super-Agers,’” by Jane Brody, New York Times (June 22, 2021), and “Are You Aiming for 100? Not Your Test Score, But Your Age?” by Gayle Kirschenbaum,” The Ethel (AARP’s women’s publication).
The indefatigable Jane Brody joins the chorus of we average agers (so far) who engage with hope and wonder at certain super friends over or approaching triple digits. My “pal” (his word), the novelist Herbert Gold is, at 97, beyond the cliché of “spry.” Rising every morning into the Korean Army marching exercise he says circulated among American troops in World War II, he gazes over the rooftops on San Francisco from the tiny one-bedroom he’s had atop Russian Hill since 1960. Herb says he enjoys the company of another pal and me, both in our 70s, for our “youth and vitality.”
Mentally, the professor (Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, where he succeeded Vladimir Nabokov in ’57) will bark sharply as ever at a manuscript (mine) – “’Happy-go-luck’? Did he jump up and click his heels? Cut the clichés! Describe him!” Said, I’ll stress, in a tone of encouragement and affection.
Brody, who turned 80 in May, uplifts her spirits biweekly via talks with Margaret Shryer, “a twice-widowed 94-year-old Minneapolitan” whom she’s known for 58 years. In regarding Herb Gold, I could easily plagiarize Brody’s admiring tribute to Shryer: “My conversations with Margaret are substantive and illuminating, covering topics that include politics, poetry, plays and philosophy as well as family pleasures and problems.”
The subject of her column, though, is research on what can be gleaned from the mental and physical persistence of these super-agers. Brody writes, “By studying centenarians, researchers hope to develop strategies to ward off Alzheimer’s disease and slow brain aging for all of us.”
Brody explains, “Fewer than 1 percent of Americans reach the age of 100, and new data from the Netherlands indicate that those who achieve that milestone with their mental faculties still intact are likely to remain so for their remaining years, even if their brains are riddled with the plaques and tangles that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer’sdisease.”
The Dutch study, directed by Henne Holstege at Amsterdam’s Vrije University and reported in JAMA Network Open in January, focuses on the 79 out of 340 research participants, who did not die or drop out during the study. Brody emphasized, “These participants experienced no decline in major cognitive measures, except for a slight loss in memory function. Basically, the participants performed as if they were 30 years younger in overall cognition; ability to make decisions and plans and execute them; recreate by drawing a figure they had looked at; list animals or objects that began with a certain letter; and not becoming easily distracted when performing a task or getting lost when they left home.”
She interviewed Thomas T. Perls, MD, a geriatrician at Boston University, who founded and directs the New England Centenarian Study, and who wrote an accompanying editorial in JAMA to the Dutch research article. Brody paraphrased Perls explanation that the Dutch super-agers “seemed to be either resistant to the disease or cognitively resilient, somehow able to ward off manifestations of its brain-damaging effects. Perhaps both.” Resilience has become apparent in autopsies revealing that some people functioned well in later life despite substantial amounts of those plaques and tangles.
Perls underscored, “Alzheimer’s disease is not an inevitable result of aging. Those genetically predisposed can markedly delay it or show no evidence of it before they die by doing the things we know are healthful: exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking, minimizing red meat in the diet, and doing things that are cognitively new and challenging to the brain, like learning a new language or a musical instrument.”
Kirschenbaum’s centenarian inspiration is her mother. Her story’s lead: “When my niece posted on a text-message thread an article about the oldest living Marine, Dorothy Schmidt Cole, who died at age 107 this past January, my 97-year-old mother, Mildred, commented, ‘I will try to beat her record.’” The piece notes, “During the last decade, the number of seniors who’ve reached their 100th birthdays has nearly doubled, from 53,000 in 2010 to 92,000 in 2020.”
She also quoted Perls saying that women are “the true winners” in the longevity marathon. He said, “The biological reasons for this have not been proven, though there are some tempting hypotheses that scientists are pursuing. . . An obvious difference between men and women is that women have two X chromosomes, and there are a bunch of genes on the X chromosome that are important to slower aging, such as the DNA repair genes.”
In an email Perls shared with GBONews, he wrote that since 2000, when 1 in 10,000 Americans reached 100, the proportion of centenarians has doubled to 1 in 5000 — 85% to 90% of them women, and only 15% to 10% men. Although scientists are yet to understand why, one theory is that women’s second X chromosome provides their cell systems a choice of expressing the better protective gene to express when needed, unlike males. Although things like healthier habits and environments play a huge role in longevity, around 70% compared to 30% for genes. But those past 80 or so and live on to 100-plus, genetics asserts greater influence, 40% to 50%, he explained.
Of note, too, Perls says that lifestyle and good public health – not geographic “hot zones” of longevity – most likely account for areas with more people living into their 90s or beyond. He adds, that Dan Buettner, author of Blue Zones, especially long-lived locations, “has come to realize this and now calls Blue Zones places or groups of people where people age well.”
Perls told this editor last year that his New England Centenarian study, which began in 1995 and is in multiple locations, continues adding centenarians to the research. Today, though, an elder has to be at least 103 to qualify. Image being carded and turned away because you’re a mere 102.
2. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship Deadline, Oct. 1: The Alicia Patterson fellowships are among the premium journalism fellowships offered today. They include stipends of $40,000 for 12 month projects, and $20,000 for six-months and “are open only to U.S. citizens who are fulltime print journalists, or to non-U.S. citizens who work fulltime for U.S. print publications, either in America or abroad. Freelancers are welcome to apply. All applicants, including those being considered for the new Cissy Patterson Fellowship for Environmental or Science Topics, should complete the Alicia Patterson Foundation application.” For the Cissy Patterson Fellowship, honoring Alicia’s aunt, no special application is needed. Applications must be postmarked by October 1. Those with questions may contact: info@aliciapatterson.org.
3. MORE STORYBOARD
*** “Tackling Latino Health, Caregiving and Housing Is Key as Older Population Grows,” by Laura Castañeda, NBC News/Latino (June 18, 2021): Subhead: “Latinos were 8 percent of the older population in 2016 — but they’re expected to be over 1 in 5 by 2060.” She writes, “Older Latinos already face housing, health and caregiving challenges, and concern is growing that as the ‘browning of the graying’ of America continues, as longtime UCLA public health researcher David Hayes-Bautista has written, the economic and social impact on Hispanics and the U.S. will be significant. Consider the numbers. The Urban Institute estimates that the number of all Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million in 2040. Latinos made up 8 percent of the older population in 2016. By 2060, however, that percentage is projected to reach 21 percent, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.”
Hayes-Bautista, director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the UCLA School of Medicine, said challenges will grow as the older Latino population expands and their life expectancy remains longer than average.
The story goes on, “He said Latino longevity can be attributed to good behaviors, such as less smoking and drinking than the general population. Health issues that do arise tend to be job-related — from agriculture or industry. Coupled with that is the lack of accessto health insurance and access to health care. ‘When Social Security was instituted, then Medicare built on top of it, the assumption was that at age 65, Latinos would get both,’ Hayes-Bautista said. “That is not the case because some industries were exempt from Social Security — agriculture was exempted, domestic service was exempted.”
Casteñda adds, “The pandemic shined a light on the health discrepancies that already existed, he said. In California, for example, his center reported that coronavirus death rates were from two times to seven times higher for Latinos than for non-Latino whites from summer 2020 through winter 2021.’ [Latinos] are excluded from programs that reach all elderly, so they have less access to health care, pensions and publicly-financed retirement programs and Medicare,’ Hayes-Bautista said. ‘So how do they get tested, vaccinated and treated when they get ill? All of these things add up.’”
*** “Diary Of A Pandemic: The Caregivers,” by Jenny Manrique, (May 31, 2021); in Spanish, “Diario de una Pandemia: Las Cuidadoras” (June 5) with both versions on the Palabra news site of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists: Manrique writes, “Vaccinations have recently helped stem the unprecedented health crisis in these facilities, where Latinos are a significant portion of the frontline workers. But it will be some time before these essential workers can overcome the emotional toll of the experience. Texas Health and Human Services Commission data shows that between April 2020 and April 2021, nearly 9,000 Texans died in nursing homes — a rate of 175 per week. Another 1,550 died in assisted living facilities. These figures account for roughly one of every five COVID-19 deaths reported in Texas.”
Manrique explains, “Latinos on the front lines, in care facilities and COVID units, during the pandemic. While performing essential work, many were also caring for elderly relatives at home, helping them through COVID infections, quarantines, isolation and depression. We’re highlighting here the personal accounts of a few who speak for many.” The article goes on to include the accounts of four front-line Latino nursing home workers in their own remarkable and moving words.
*** “Social Security Versus National Security: Whose Entitlement Really Makes Us Safer?” by Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch (June 15, 2021): Under the top header, “It’s Time to Touch the Third Rail,” Gordon, author of American Nuremberg, notes that her fellow progressives find it “kind of amazing” that President Joe Biden is doing better than the thought he would on “vaccinations, infrastructure, acknowledging racism in policing. A lot of pieces of the Green New Deal, without calling it that. The child subsidies.”
Gordon continues, “’But on the military,’ they say, ‘Yeah, same old, same old.’” That is, “The two major parties . . . can differ vastly on domestic policies, but they remain united when it comes to projecting U.S. military power around the world and to the government spending that sustains it. In other words, the U.S. ‘national security’ budget is still the third-rail of politics in this country,” not Social Security, as the late House Speaker Tip O’Neill, D-Mass., declared it in 1981.
Regarding overall social spending, Gordon writes, President Ronald Reagan successfully limited federal support for programs such as unemployment insurance. The New York Times quoted Assistant Secretary of Labor Albert Agrisani’s statement that due to the availability of unemployment insurance and extended benefits offered then, “There are jobs out there that people don’t want to take.’” (Hear that echo now?)
But, Gordon goes on, “Social Security was then and remains today a hugely popular program. Because workers contribute to the fund with every paycheck and usually collect benefits only after retirement.”
She adds, “When the president moved to reduce Social Security benefits, ostensibly to offset a rising deficit in its fund, he was shocked by the near-unanimous bipartisan resistance.” The U.S. Senate “voted 96-0 to oppose any plan that would ‘precipitously and unfairly reduce early retirees’ benefits.” With that, the Reagan administration hammered out a compromise with O’Neill and the Democrats to shore up the program in a 1983 agreement.
Gordon explains that Social Security is self-financed, unlike other government programs, and discusses how modest changes by Congress could easily secure it for decades to come. Republicans, of course, will cry out, as they have pretty much since 1981, that “the system is going broke!”
Her commentary turns to the second “High voltage, untouchable rail in American politics and that’s funding for the military and weapons manufacturers.” Although it’s difficult to tease out the total commitment to the military, because some spending is buried in various department budgets, says Gordon, “President Trump’s last Pentagon budget, for the fiscal year ending on September 30th, offered about $740 billion to the armed services (not including outlays for veteran services and pensions).
Although there are other estimates, she adds, “None of those figures even faintly reflected full national-security spending, which is certainly well over a trillion dollars annually. Most estimates put President Biden’s 2022 military budget at $753 billion — about the same as Trump’s for the previous year.” That figure does not include arms sales to other countries federally permitted to major corporations like Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, making the United States the biggest arms dealer in the world.
Gordon asks, “How is it that the country that spends more on “defense” than the next seven, or possibly 10, countries combined is so insecure that every year’s Pentagon budget must exceed the last one? Why is it that, despite those billions for military entitlements, our critical infrastructure, including hospitals, gas pipelines, and subways (not to mention Cape Cod steamships), lies exposed to hackers? . . . Why is ‘national security’ more important than food security, or health security, or housing security?”
She cites Brown University’s Costs of War project, which reports: “Military spending creates fewer jobs than the same amount of money would have, if invested in other sectors. Clean energy and health care spending create 50% more jobs than the equivalent amount of spending on the military. Education spending creates more than twice as many jobs.”
While President Biden’s proposals are vigorously addressing child poverty, the coronavirus pandemic, and climate change, she writes, “He’s still hewing to the old Cold War bipartisan alliance when it comes to the real third rail of American politics — military spending. Until the power can be cut to that metaphorical conduit, real national security remains an elusive dream.”
*** GBONews suggests that if you’re not planning to take a copy of War and Peace to the beach this summer, you might find a less hefty, although informative volume, in 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 a foreword by, Pulitzer Prize–winning economics journalist and self-described lifelong Republican, David Cay Johnston. As we’ve mentioned before, Altman and Kingson, co-founders of the advocacy group Social Security Works, were bipartisan staffers for the 1983 commission that shored up Social Security’s finances.
4. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Squint: Re-Visioning the Second Half of Life by Margit Novak: They’re eyerollers – those self-published, self-help book on “Re-something” aging. The titles scroll in and out of my email stack every year, especially with their too-clever titles necessitating an explanation, in this case, “Sometimes squinting is used to bring subjects into sharper focus, sometimes to simplify and better see the whole.” OK. Yet, when I saw Margit Novack’s message that she was about to publish this one, I thought, at least I have to take a look. I then ended up reading her thoughtful and well-written reflections of aging on the move – literally.
You see, Novack is one of very small group of professionals in aging who invented the senior moving industry. Her Philadelphia-based company, Moving Solutions, which she established in 1996, was the first if its kind that I heard of when I was editing Aging Today at the American Society on Aging. This wasn’t your usual Starving Students Movers, but a storyteller’s treasury.
Working patiently and sensitively to help older people downsize, often from family home to an apartment or senior living residence, Novack has sorted through the objects, dust and memories of countless older adults. Without training, a well intentioned helper might dunk an elder’s heart into the deep well of emotional trauma by dismissively telling an elder, “That old lamp won’t fit the new place – let’s just get rid of it.”
Over the years Novack also became founding president of the National Association of Senior Move Managers (NASMM), helped created its Ethics Compliance Committee, and developed training and certification programs.
As it happens, Novack contacted this editor about her book just as I was sizing down from a house, after four decades, to a one-bedroom. GBONews readers, just look at your bookshelves, your files, you know, the paper ones, the letters, the – “Oh, yes, her!” There’s the living you’ve preserved in those items.
Now at 71, Novack squints in this slender memoir at her own passing years and the lessons she’s gleaned from older relatives – one sweetly experiencing dementia, another sourly critical of everyone in her path – along with a selection of memorable senior-move clients.
Brief chapters, 33 of them, sometimes lean toward the homily: “I learned that despite careful planning, life is unpredictable.” More often than not, though, Novack finds truth in her keen observation and counterintuitive realizations. Once while helping her Aunt Betty to move, she crisply urged the 91-year-old to rid herself of an unused lamp that she loved. Margit should have known to go more gently when her beloved aunt unexpectedly called her “Margie.”
Of the distressing result, Novack writes, “As a senior move manager, I knew that stress and anxiety take an enormous toll on seniors, a toll that often manifests itself as memory loss and disorganized thinking. Whatever cognitive status Betty had before the move, the disorientation I observed Sunday night was Betty under the worst conditions. I had caused it, and I should have known better.” Yes, she learned, go gently into that good life.
In another chapter she addresses ageism, including her own attitudes: “Ageism is so commonplace in today’s society that we don’t even recognize the stereotypes implicit in many things we say and feel.” Ageism has become so imbedded in American culture, she writes in a chapter titled “Consumer Invisibility,” the we hardly notice when something like Survey Monkey routinely segments ages ending with “65 or older,” a designation covering decades for most people today.
Playing devil’s advocate Novack asks whether Survey Monkey assumes few older adults are online to receive their polls. She stresses, though, “According to the Pew Research Center, 67 percent of people over 65 use the Internet (up from 13 percent in 2000). One-third of people over 75 are Internet users, and one-third of people over seventy-five use smart- phones.”
All in all, this e-book is informative, well designed, and clearly written. Journalists can request a review copy from Margit Novack at margitnovack@gmail.com, or call her at (610) 613-1007.
*** Love After 50: How to Find It, Enjoy It, and Keep It by Francine Russo is due for release by Simon & Schuster, July 13. A veteran magazine journalist on social trends (New York Times, The Atlantic), Russo previously authored They’re Your Parents, Too! How Siblings Can Survive Their Parents’ Aging Without Driving Each Other Crazy (Bantam Books, 2010).
Of course, there’s much advice, from Russo’s personal experience, about dating, dealing with adult children, and more mature approaches to sex and relationships. As for those hitting 50, GBO’s editor can only say, finally, someone is paying attention to those Gen-X kids. Stay tuned for someone’s book on love 70-style. For a review copy of Russo’s new book contact Elizabeth.Gay@SimonandSchuster.com.
*** Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, by Daniel Kahneman et al., Little, Brown Spark 2021: The Nobel Prize-winning economics sage has just seen publication, with two coauthors, of their book, from Little, Brown Spark, 2021. As it was being released, Krista Tippett reprised her 2017 interview with Kahneman for her “On Being” podcast.
Toward the end of the hourlong conversation, she asked Kahneman about his own “evolution” in how he reflects on his revelations about the human capacity “to do better thinking, but very incrementally . . . your own way of coming in at the question of the human condition.”
Kahneman replied, “Well, you know, I have been shifting positions all my life. I like changing my mind, and I look for ways of changing my mind. And this is what I’m doing now, in questioning the importance of biases. But as I said, I don’t believe — I’m certainly less smart than I was when I was younger. I’m in my 80s, so — but it’s not only that. I haven’t become more sensitive to biases. I really haven’t improved my thinking in any way, I think. And if I have, it’s accumulating experience. It’s not by learning better ways to think.”
There it is: “Accumulating experience,” our longevity potential for filtering out the noise in our minds as we realize what matters.
5. GOOD SOURCES
*** “Evaluating Medicare Through the COVID-19 Looking Glass,” by Aimee Cicchiello and Gretchen Jacobson, Commonwealth Fund’s To the Point, (June 16, 2021): “The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on Medicare beneficiaries and highlighted fault lines within the program.” The blog points to gaps in coverage and outlines areas for improvement. The website’s summary notes, “Racial disparities . . . have deepened — Black beneficiaries have been hospitalized for COVID-19 at rates four-times higher than those for White beneficiaries and tended to have longer wait times to receive COVID-19 test results. People in nursing homes, where more than one-third of COVID-19 deaths occurred, have suffered disproportionately as well. As more beneficiaries receive COVID immunizations and pandemic precautions are gradually phased out, policymakers will need a multifaceted approach to address the issues the pandemic has amplified, the authors say.”
*** Gender and Money in Later Life: How Older Women Face Greater Economic Insecurity Than Men, UMass Boston Gerontology Institute Blog (June 15, 2021): Says the Institute’s release blog, the new report uses the Elder Index™ to demonstrate the depth and scope of economic disadvantage experienced by older women living alone across the United States.” The study documents disparities in every state.
The piece quotes study lead author, Prof. Jan E. Mutchler, “Lifelong patterns of inequality in work experiences and wealth accumulation are behind a substantial gender disparity in retirement economic security.” She added, “The consequences of that disparity affect so many older women who routinely face hard choices about basic expenses they simply can’t afford.”
The report is titled, “Late-life Gender Disparities in Economic Security in the Context of Geography, Race and Ethnicity, and Age: Evidence from the 2020 Elder Index,” June 2021. (Annoyingly, the email notice linked to the wrong research.)
The release continues that Mutchler and co-authors Nidya Velasco Roldan and Yang Li, “found that 54 percent of women age 65 or older and living alone were economically insecure – meaning they did not have enough income to afford their local cost of living without assistance. They determined that 45 percent of older single men had insufficient income to afford the same no-frills budget covering housing, healthcare, food, transportation and other important miscellaneous items.”
*** “Investing in Caregivers: An Essential Resource for Our Nation,” RRF Foundation Issue Brief (May 2021): The eight-pager with graphics summarizes four interrelated “caregiving strategies,” advocacy, replication of evidence-based models, identifying and assessing caregiver, and research. One graphic drawn from a 2020 National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and AARP report shows that of the 53 million-plus caregivers in the United States, the brief shows that one-third (34%) are Boomers, while 29% are Gen Xers, and nearly a quarter (23%) are Millennials. Silents in the 70s and 80s constitute 6%. As for Gen Z, the young (born 1997-2015) are taking on 6% of family caregiving needs.
The piece by RRF (formerly Retirement Research Foundation) found, “estimates suggest that the care they provide is worth nearly half a trillion dollars, an economic contribution significantly greater than all government outlays for institutional and community-based long-term services and support combined. This makes caregivers the nation’s largest healthcare workforce, an indispensable part of the health and social service delivery system for older adults and a vital resource for the nation.”
*** “Workforce Issues in Long-Term Care” is a special issue of The Gerontologist, from the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). The 17 peer reviewed articles examine such concerns as how policy and workplace practices might better attract and retain workers in this high-turnover field; how the day-to-day experiences of direct care workers might relate to quality of care; and what needs to happen to resolve the direct-care workforce crisis in long-term care.
One essay is titled, “Not Just How Many But Who Is on Shift: The Impact of Workplace Incivility and Bullying on Care Delivery in Nursing Homes.” Another expert study compares how organizational factors affect the retention of direct-care workers differently in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Yet another discusses the “Stigma of Working in Aged Care.” For reporters this is a deep foray into the weeds of how Grand Americans are and will be treated in the wake of the pandemic. And it’s also one-stop research both on the issues and for expert sources. For information, such as how to reach article authors, contact GSA’s Todd Kluss, tkluss@geron.org, (202) 587-2839.
*** “May Revision of the Proposed 2021-22 Budget: Impact on California’s Older Adults, People With Disabilities, and Family Caregivers,” SCAN Foundation “Summary” (June 1, 2021): “On May 14, 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom released the May Revision of the 2021-22 proposed budget. The revision includes a $75.7 billion surplus with investments in economic recovery related to COVID-19 and resources to implement the Master Plan for Aging.”
Whether or not you cover California, the SCAN Foundation’s analysis and charts offer a template for forming questions about how a state’s administration is addressing specific needs of seniors and people with disabilities. Soon after his election three years ago, Gov. Newsom appointed a citizens commission to develop a 10-year “Master Plan for Aging” in the Golden State. The commission, including many distinguished experts in gerontology, put out a “blueprint” after about a year. States will vary, of course, but this plan offers a virtual outline of issues that journalists could use to develop questions and potential story ideas.
Reporters in California may get a handle on what all the Master Plan hoopla means where the budget meets the road, before and after the repaving of revenue because of the federal American Rescue Plan (about $27 billion for California) and greater state tax receipts that the state anticipated when the pandemic hit. (Think of the zoom-boom in Silicon Valley as the country went virtual in its jammies.)
The SCAN report also includes useful links, such as to the Master Plan on Aging, and other background sources.
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2021 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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