GBO News: Spring Training for Pres. Biden, 80; Farewell, Pres. Carter, 98; Roslyn Carter Reporting Fellowship Deadline; War and Love in Ukraine; Forced Suicides for Japan’s Elders; KHN Expose on Facilities Cashing In vs. Resident Care; & MORE

GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS 

E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations.  

February ­­­­22, 2023 — Volume 30, Number 2

EDITOR’S NOTEGBONews, 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. NOTE ALSO: Some news links below hit paywalls and are inaccessible without subscriptions, although a number of those do allow free access to the first few stories.

In This IssueIt’s Jimmy Carter Post-Presidency Day. (He actually earned his Nobel Peace Prize.)

1. AM I OUTRAGED, YET?: 

*** GBONews Editor on: Spring Training, Mark Miller’s Congressional Entitlements Rundown, Ezra Klein’s Maybe Biden’s OK at 80, and . . .

*** NYT’s Asian Aging Perspectives (Seppuku Proposal for Japanese Elders); 

*** “The Alternative, Optimistic Story of Population Decline,” by Wang Feng

*** “Old People and How Elites Perceive Them,” by Richard Eskow, LA Progressive, answering NYT conservative columnist Ross Douthat’s “Five Rules for an Aging World.”

2. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism deadline April 7; *** The Maynard 200 Fellowship program (“Empowering Journalists of Color”) is accepting applications for 2023, untilMarch 31; *** California Newspaper Publishers Association Honored Sandy Closefounder and director of Ethnic Media Services. 

3. THE STORYBOARD: 

*** “Nursing Home Owners Drained Cash During Pandemic While Residents Deteriorated,” by Jordan RauKaiser Health News

*** “Elderly Couple in Ukraine Says Their Resilience All About Happiness,” by Elissa NadwornyNPR News;

*** “UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer’s Inner Workings,” by David Armstrong, Patrick Rucker and Maya Miller, ProPublica;

*** “A Group of Grandmothers in Zimbabwe is Helping the World Reimagine Mental Health Care,” by Kim SamuelBoston Globe

4. GOOD SOURCES: *** Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) Meeting in St Louis, March 9-12, with keynote by author Tracy Kidder, plus expert sessions on aging; *** University of Minnesota Annual Lecture on Long-Term Care to present Jennifer Wolff, PhD of Johns Hopkins, May 9. 

1. AM I OUTRAGED, YET? 

*** GBONews Editor’s Caveat: With Spring training underway this week, we’re playing “pepper” again, what my sandlot crew called fielding rapid fire grounders and liners in practice. In this case, though, thanks to all the consternation over President Joe Biden’s having turned 80—and his deft State of the Union double play vs. the GOP razz crew on Social Security and Medicare—stories are coming hot and fast this way. For this issue, we’re stretching mostly for hardballs on the right and left sides from the New York Times, but pick your medium for new stories on old themes.

Notably sizzling into GBO’s glove was Mark Miller’s “Retiring” column“Fixing Social Security and Medicare,”in the Feb. 19 “Sunday Business” section, laying out differences between Democratic and Republican proposals in Congress. A solid tutorial on the underlying terms of debate. 

The same issue includes Ezra Klein’s fretting, “There is no end of commentary gently — and not so gently — urging President Biden to act his age and step aside.” His op-ed exposes much about the Dems’ internal debate over the 2024 election. While Klein still worries about Biden’s “vigor,” were he to remain president past his 86th birthday, the pensive columnist offers a mostly even-handed reassessment based on Biden’s recent track record of accomplishments, commenting even, “Biden’s age has carried some quiet benefits.” That piece ran two days before the train-loving president chugged 10-hours each way in and out of Kyiv for a milestone meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Klein qualifies his more positive reevaluation by waffling over the “uncertainty” over how “actuarial tables darken in one’s mid-80s, and there’s no pretending otherwise.” He should be reassured, though, that there’s no pretense when class demographics trump statistical averages, as GBONews quoted top gerontologist John W. “Jack” Rowe, MD, of Columbia University, in our last issue (“Ageism in Politics Faces the Music”). Rowe placed President Biden among the growing ranks of “Super Agers,” well educated, married, affluent seniors, typically white, with strong social networks. Mortality is certain, of course, but morbidity does squeeze out more up the socioeconomic side of those actuarial charts. 

*** NYT’s Asian Aging Perspectives— For a global perspective, how about an immodest proposal for forced eldercide in Japan and dueling views on China’s rapid aging.  

*** “A Yale Professor Suggested Mass Suicide for Old People in Japan. What Did He Mean?” by Motoko Rich andHikari Hida, New York Times (Feb. 12, 2023): GBONews readers, let’s spare ourselves the outrage. Yusuke Narita has expectorated several immodest proposals for Japan, such as imposing mandatory ‘seppuku,’ Samurai-style suicide of elders. His ideas place him, write Rich and Hida, “among a few Japanese provocateurs who have found an eager audience by gleefully breaching social taboos.” Unsurprisingly, And he has hundreds of thousands of social media followers. Well, that’s a pittance in Donald Trump terms, but Rich and Hida accurately report that those followers are “among frustrated youths who believe their economic progress has been held back by a gerontocratic society.” 

Narita, 37, an assistant economics professor at Yale University, described by one of his doctoral supervisors, quoted by the Times, as a “talented scholar” with an “offbeat sense of humor.” He’s been waving his virtual tongue like a long gun, then claiming he was only joking before doing it again. Narita insists, of course, that his comments were “taken out of context.” Where, or where, have we heard that before. NYT’s Rich and Hida, however, expose his attention-grabbing, anti-social media ways over recent years. Their article, though does include two references to genuine, long-term dangers for Japan’s elders.

The story notes key reasons for the coiling anger he pokes. Rich and Hida explain, “Detractors say Dr. Narita highlights the burdens of an aging population without suggesting realistic policies that could alleviate some of the pressures. ‘He’s not focusing on helpful strategies such as better access to day care or broader inclusion of women in the work force or broader inclusion of immigrants,’ said Alexis Dudden, a historian at the University of Connecticut who studies modern Japan. ‘Things that might actually invigorate Japanese society.’” 

Just another bad-guy provocateur? Sure, but these things always wag in the same economic direction, rightward. Narita emailed the reporters that he was “primarily concerned with the phenomenon in Japan where the same tycoons continue to dominate the worlds of politics, traditional industries, and media/entertainment/journalism for many years.” Yet, it hasn’t been anti-corporate democratic socialists who have taken up his messaging. 

The story stressed, “Shocking or not, some lawmakers say Dr. Narita’s ideas are opening the door to much-needed political conversations about pension reform and changes to social welfare. ‘There is criticism that older people are receiving too much pension money and the young people are supporting all the old people, even those who are wealthy,’ said Shun Otokita, 39, a member of the upper house of Parliament with Nippon Ishin no Kai, a right-leaning party.”

The budgetary blade to watch is the one twisting at Japan’s social welfare programs for the old—and the young—even as the governments ramps up its military spending for the first time since World War II. 

*** “The Alternative, Optimistic Story of Population Decline,” by Wang Feng, New York Times (Jan. 30, 2023): Feng, a University of California, Irvine, sociologist and co-author of One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000 (Harvard, 2001), offers a more positive alternative to the newspaper’s recent news analysis, “China’s Population Falls, Heralding a Demographic Crisis”. That full-page story by Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang, declared, “Deaths outnumbered births last year for the first time in six decades. Experts see major implications for China, its economy and the world.”  

Feng declares, “The shoe has dropped. The big one. China, the most populous country on the planet for centuries, this month reported [link to Stevenson and Wang’s story] its first population decline in six decades, a trend that is almost certainly irreversible. By the end of the century China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to UN projections, and may already have been overtaken by India.”

He adds, “The news has been met with gloom and doom, often framed as the start of China’s inexorable decline and, more broadly, the harbinger of a demographic and economic “time bomb” that will strain the world’s capacity to support aging populations. There is no doubt that a shrinking global population — a trend expected to set in by the end of this century — poses unprecedented challenges for humanity.”

Feng stresses, “But the alarmist warnings are often simplistic and premature. The glass is at least half full. Shrinking populations are usually part of a natural, inevitable process, and rather than focus excessively on concerns like labor shortages and pension support, we need to look at the brighter spots for our world. There is no need for panic; we’ve made that mistake before.” 

Some Facts: “In the second half of the 20th century the world was panicking about unstoppable population growth. The number of people on the planet more than tripled in seven decades, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to around eight billion in 2022. Turns out, that was a transitory phase when mortality rates fell faster than fertility rates because of improved nutrition and public health, and relative peace. . . The population declines seen today in some countries have come about largely as a happy story of greater longevity and freedom.”

Women’s Work: “Credit greater investment in child and maternal health everywhere: A mother who successfully brings her child to term and an infant who survives to childhood lower birthrates because parents often don’t feel the need to try again. Greater availability of free or affordable contraception has also reduced unwanted births. More women in the work force is a recipe for even greater productivity and prosperity and could help ease labor concerns among falling populations. More women than ever are rising to leadership positions in business, media and politics.”

The Upshot: Global aging can mean more workers “remaining productive later in life and growing markets for older consumers in areas like tourism, nutritional supplements and medical devices, among others. Fewer people on the planet, of course, may reduce humanity’s ecological footprint and competition for finite resources. . . This new demography brings new challenges, including the need to offer quality and affordable child care, make college education more affordable and equitable, provide guaranteed minimum income and make societies more gender equal.

“Governments should abandon the mindless pursuit of economic growth in favor of well-being for citizens. There is no reason the world’s population must keep growing or even remain level. And just as earlier panic led to harmful policies in China and elsewhere, efforts to raise fertility — which may prove futile — risk viewing women once again as birth machines.”

*** “Old People and How Elites Perceive Them,” by Richard Eskow, LA Progressive (Feb. 16, 2023): Eskow, a veteran commentator on social insurance, offered a thorough take down of the New York Times’ conservative column by Ross Douthat announcing his “Five Rules for an Aging World” (Jan. 22, 2023). Hint: Douthat’s “column provide a useful guide to how his “rules for the age of demographic decadence” enumerate bedrock conservative opposition to social insurance and lobbying efforts against anti-trust and other rules that tend to block “technological breakthroughs” and such. His column and Eskow’s rebuttal offer a tutorial on the debate over demographic aging.

Eskow writes, “Are older Americans really ‘wealthy’? In the third quarter of 2022, Americans 70 years of age and older held a total of $34.2 trillion in wealth. . . Class matters. Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project notes that the top 10% of people over 65 held more than 70% of that age group’s wealth in 2019, roughly mirroring our economy’s overall inequality.”

2. EYES ON THE PRIZE

*** The Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism [cartercenter.org/mhjfellows] is accepting applications until April 7. Applicants can be US citizens and residents. “The yearlong, nonresidential fellowships aim to equip journalists with resources to produce compelling and balanced reporting on mental health and substance use issues and to develop a diverse cohort of journalists who can effectively report on the topics across evolving and emerging platforms.” Eight US fellows will each receive a $10,000 stipend, intensive training on behavioral health reporting at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Applications must be completed and submitted online. The 2023-24 fellowship year begins in September. 

Founded in 1996 by former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, the fellowships aim to “give journalists the resources they need to report on mental health — one of the world’s most underreported health issues — to help dismantle through storytelling the stigma that millions of people face every day, according to their website.”

The selection committee includes current and former journalists, mental health experts, and the Fellowship Advisory Board, “with an emphasis on diversity across ethnicity, geography, mediums, and the communities their fellowship projects will cover,” says their site. Find details on how to apply here . For additional inquiries, email carterfellows@cartercenter.org, 404-420-5129.

*** The Maynard 200 Fellowship Program (“Empowering Journalists of Color”) is accepting applications for the 2023 cohort until March 31, 2023. The fellowship “provides professional development training and year-long mentorship for leaders, storytellers, frontline editors and managers, and media entrepreneurs of diverse backgrounds.” Besides attending the Maynard Institute’s conference tuition free, “each fellow gains one-to-one mentorship from a veteran media executive or expert that aligns with their relevant discipline.” 

Selected fellows will gather in-person in late June and late October for training sessions hosted by the Bob Schieffer College of Communication at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, Texas. Also, they “will conduct project work that takes place virtually over the 8-week period between in-person gatherings,” according to the website. The fellowship covers hotel accommodations and up to $500 for transportation for each of the two project weeks in June and October. Apply at https://tinyurl.com/3s5zhvbs

The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education honors the journalism of the late distinguished journalist Bob Maynard, who as editor and publisher of the Oakland Tribune, was one of the few Black publishers of a major metropolitan daily, and his wife, reporter, Nancy Hicks Maynard

*** The California Newspaper Publishers Association honored Sandy Close, founder and director of Ethnic Media Services “for her service and commitment” to ethnic media organizations nationwide. In accepting the award, she quoted the late investigative journalist Chauncey Bailey, “Separately, we’re fingers on a hand. Together, we’re a fist.” Close also celebrated the association event for its diversity, noting the conference “truly looks like California.” Close, a recipient of a McArthur “genius” grant and I.F. Stone Medal for independent journalism from Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, is also a co-founder of the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program.

3. THE STORYBOARD

*** “Nursing Home Owners Drained Cash During Pandemic While Residents Deteriorated,” by Jordan RauKaiser Health News (Feb. 1, 2023): This story also ran on NPR. It can be republished for free.  

The Lede: “After the nursing home where Leann Sample worked was bought by private investors, it started falling apart. Literally. Part of a ceiling collapsed on a nurse, the air conditioning conked out regularly, and a toilet once burst on Sample while she was helping a resident in the bathroom, she recalled in a court deposition.”

The Nutshell: “The decrepit conditions Sample described weren’t due to a lack of money. Over seven years, The Villages of Orleans Health & Rehabilitation Center, located in western New York near Lake Ontario, paid nearly $16 million in rent to its landlord — a company that was owned by the same investors who owned the nursing home, court records show. From those coffers, the owners paid themselves and family members nearly $10 million, while residents injured themselves falling, developed bedsores, missed medications, and stewed in their urine and feces because of a shortage of aides, New York authorities allege. At the height of the pandemic, lavish payments flowed into real estate, management, and staffing companies financially linked to nursing home owners throughout New York.” 

What’s More: “In 2020, these affiliated corporations collectively amassed profits of $269 million, yielding average margins of 27%, while the nursing homes that hired them were strained by staff shortages, harrowing injuries, and mounting Covid deaths, state records reveal. . . . Some nursing home owners moved money from their facilities through corporate arrangements that are widespread, and legal, in every state. Nationally, nearly 9,000 for-profit nursing homes — the majority — outsource crucial services such as nursing staff, management, and medical supplies to affiliated corporations, known as ‘related parties,’ that their owners own, invest in, or control, federal records show.”

What They Say: “Lawyers for The Villages and its investors have asked the judge in the case for a delay until April to respond to the allegations of fraud and resident neglect in the lawsuit that [New York Attorney General Letitia James filed last November.”

Nationally: “Separating a nursing home operation and its building into two corporations is a common practice around the country. In New York, for-profit nursing homes with related-party realty companies spent 19% more of their operating revenue toward rent in 2020 than did for-profits that leased from unaffiliated firms, KHN found.”

*** “An Elderly Couple in Ukraine Says Their Resilience Is All About Happiness,” by Elissa Nadworny, NPR News (Jan. 28, 2023, from Slovyansk, Ukraine): NPR host Michel Martin beings, “Imagine going to sleep every night while artillery –Russian shells — rain down. It’s a reality. Many elderly residents in Ukrainian cities along the front lines lived for months.” Nadworny reports, “Viktor Lada ushers us into the apartment he shares with his wife, Lubov. They fuss over us.” She is 92, he’s 91; they’ve been together for 70 years.”

“‘It’s not our flat,’ Lubov says, ‘our flat was destroyed.’ Lubov had just gone to bed when the apartment they lived in for 63 years was hit by Russian artillery.” The story goes on, saying that social worker Svitlana Domoratska has “worked with the couple for years, bringing them meals, helping around the house. In the fall, Ukrainian forces pushed the Russian front line further back from this city. . . Svitlana still remembers rushing to the Lada’s apartment when it was hit. It was terrifying, she says. She stayed with them for hours, cleaning the apartment, and then later helped them move into an apartment their grandson bought for them a few blocks away. . . There’s still a hole in the back left over from a piece of shrapnel. 

“Perhaps it was love, Lubov suggests, that helped them survive those long months. . . ‘But this is not a story about sorrow,’ says Viktor. Lubov adds, ‘We survived. We’re still here. It’s a story about happiness.’”

*** “UnitedHealthcare Tried to Deny Coverage to a Chronically Ill Patient. He Fought Back, Exposing the Insurer’s Inner Workings,”  by David Armstrong, Patrick Rucker and Maya Miller, ProPublica (Feb. 2, 2023, co-published with Capital Forum): 

The Lede: “In May 2021, a nurse at UnitedHealthcare called a colleague to share some welcome news about a problem the two had been grappling with for weeks. United provided the health insurance plan for students at Penn State University. . . But one student was costing United a lot of money. Christopher McNaughton suffered from a crippling case of ulcerative colitis . . . His medical bills were running nearly $2 million a year. . . Nurse Victoria Kavanaugh told her colleague that a doctor contracted by United to review the case had concluded that McNaughton’s treatment was ‘not medically necessary.’ Her colleague, Dave Opperman, reacted to the news with a long laugh.” 

In a Nutshell: “More than 200 million Americans are covered by private health insurance. But data from state and federal regulators shows that insurers reject about 1 in 7 claims for treatment. Many people, faced with fighting insurance companies, simply give up: One study found that Americans file formal appeals on only 0.1% of claims denied by insurers under the Affordable Care Act. Insurers have wide discretion in crafting what is covered by their policies, beyond some basic services mandated by federal and state law. They often deny claims for services that they deem not ‘medically necessary.’” (United eventually covered McNaughton’s treatment.)

The Upshot: “Biologics are considered specialty drugs, a class that includes the best-selling Humira, used to treat arthritis. Specialty drug spending in the U.S. is expected to reach $505 billion in 2023, according to an estimate from Optum, United’s health services division. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review [ICER], a nonprofit that analyzes the value of drugs, found in 2020 that the biologic drugs used to treat patients like McNaughton are often effective but overpriced for their therapeutic benefit. To be judged cost-effective by ICER, the biologics should sell at a steep discount to their current market price, the panel found.” 

*** “A Group of Grandmothers in Zimbabwe is Helping the World Reimagine Mental Health Care,” by Kim SamuelBoston Globe (Feb. 2, 2023): The Dek: The Friendship Bench is inexpensive, easy to replicate, and effective. Could it work here?”

The American Problem: Samuel, author of “On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation,” wrote,“An estimated 150 million Americans live in areas that lack mental health professionals. In the coming years, the country faces a predicted shortage of up to 30,000 psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other mental health caregivers. More than 60 percent of psychiatrists are 55 or older and approaching retirement. . . We may need to reimagine mental health care in fundamental ways.”

A Solution: “Two decades ago, a talented young psychiatrist in Zimbabwe named Dixon Chibanda . . . lost a patient — a young woman with a promising career and life ahead of her — to suicide. . .  [He] decided to devote his career to the vexing question of how to help people who most need mental health care but who face financial, geographic, or cultural barriers to access. [While] recruiting and training mental health practitioners, Chibanda found that there was, in fact, already a large cohort of experienced, empathetic, respected caregivers who were ready and willing: grandmothers. . . ‘They are custodians of the local culture and wisdom,’ Chibanda told a global symposium on reimagining community in 2019.”

Where? “In consultation with an inaugural group of 14 grandmothers in Harare, Chibanda decided that, rather than seeing people under the fluorescent lights of crowded clinics and hospitals, the grandmothers could provide their services in a simple, unpretentious, and accessible location: a park bench. From the beginning, the grandmothers shaped the free program. When Chibanda initially proposed calling it the “Mental Health Bench,” the women balked. They suggested calling it the Friendship Bench as a way of eliminating shame and stigma.”

Research: “Grandmothers I spoke with reported gaining strength and sustenance from feeling part of a community that extends beyond the bench. . . Ruth Verhey, a researcher associated with the program, has studied the effect of the Friendship Bench on the grandmothers and found that their participation correlates with a lower incidence of a range of common mental health disorders, such as anxiety and depression. “

The story adds, “There are now close to 100 peer-reviewed studies of the effectiveness of the Friendship Bench. Research on the program, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2016, found significant improvement in participants with depression who received therapy from a trained grandmother. . . Last year, the program reached just over 60,000 people in Zimbabwe. Similar projects inspired by the grandmothers have been launched in locations from Kenya to Vietnam. The program is a model for pilot efforts around New York City — including in the Bronx, Harlem, and Brooklyn.”

4. GOOD SOURCES

*** Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) to Meet You in St Louis, March 9-12, with its conference keynote session starring Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder and the subject of his new book, Boston physician to the homeless Jim O’Connell, MD. The will discuss the book, Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People.

Over three-plus days, the AHCJ conference will include several sessions of particular interest to reporters on intergenerational issues. Panelists for “Alzheimer’s update: What journalists can learn from latest research” will include Liz Seegert, AHCJ’s Core Topic Leader on Aging, independent journalist for PBS Next Avenue and other media, and co-director of our own Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. 

Other panelists will be Washington University neurologist, David Holtzman, MD, also of  Barnes-Jewish Hospital; Bryan James, PhD of Chicago’s Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center; and Suzanne Schindler, an associate professor of neurology at Washington University in St. Louis. They will examine controversies surrounding the recently approved drugs Lequembi and Aduhelm, as well as discuss the development of targeted screenings and treatments for Alzheimer’s, among other medical and social care issues.

  • Another noteworthy session will be “How private equity investors are reshaping health care,” with investigative reporters Bob Herman of STAT, Fred Schulte of Kaiser Health News and two experts.
  • “The Rx for high drug prices and patent abuse”  will “unpack patent thickets,” such as the role of so-called patient benefit managers and “other anticompetitive practices driving up prescription drug prices in the U.S. They’ll dissect whether Medicare price negotiation and other federal initiatives at the Patent and Trademark Office and the FDA and state-level actions can finally begin to make a difference in the affordability and accessibility of medications.”
  • Presenting a session titled, “Never a dull moment: Using narrative tools for better health care reporting” will be veteran journalist and author Roy Wenzl of Wichita State University, discussing his honors college course, “The Power of Storytelling.” He’ll explore how to enliven dry, data-driven stories on topics such as “breakthroughs in vaccine development, cancer research and the relentless search for an Alzheimer’s treatment.”

* “The biggest untold story in health care: 53 million family caregivers” promises to introduce the “new face of care, including a caregiver who has created a support network, a mid-career entrepreneur who cares for his father, and an expert to talk about legislation and policy initiatives. Among the panelists will be former Journalists in Aging Fellow Julia Yarbough creator and publisher of Keeping It REAL Caregiving.

Along with sessions on disability and women’s health, seminars will dissect “The writer-editor relationship,” with former Journalists in Aging Fellows freelancers Cheryl Weinstock (New York Times and others) and Independent journalistJyoti Madhusoodanan, who will also speak on the panel about “Adding context on equity and access to health stories.”

Those not heading to St. Louis for the conference should still look the program and AHCJ website over. AHCJ is a rich source of information, including for non-health care reporters whose work overlaps with health issues. They also offer travel fellowships for many of their programs.

*** University of Minnesota’s Annual Lecture in Long-Term Care, honoring the late Robert L. Kane, MD, will present Jennifer Wolff, PhD, Director, Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, on Tues., May 9, 2023, 4-5 p.m. Central Time, both live and on Zoom. Wolff is a widely respected researcher on the care of people with complex health needs and disabilities and initiatives directed at better supporting them and their family caregivers within systems of care delivery. Registration is free. Those with questions should email Prof. Joe Gaugler, or call (612) 626-2485.

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 2023 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.

To subscribe for free or unsubscribe, or if you have technical problems receiving issues of GBO or if you’d like to be removed from the list, e-mail me at paul.kleyman@earthlink.net, or pfkleyman@gmail.com or phone me at 415-821-2801