GBO NEWS: USA Today’s ‘Dying for Care’ COVID Expose with USC Webinar; NYT: Broken Patent System Drains Medicare; 4 New Bookmobile Titles; Houston’s Strange Civil Rights Legacy; HIV Over 50; Sisterhood Wellness Walks; & MORE
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations – Our 29th Year.
April 22, 2022 — Volume 29, Number 5
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. 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 Issue: From Mother Earth to Earthlings: Quit Giving Me These Hot Flashes!
1. THE STORYBOARD: *** “Dying for Care,” (Pervasive failures of eldercare business during pandemic), by USA Today team; * Webinar with “Dying for Care” lead reporter Leticia Stein, April 28, by USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism;
*** “Save America’s Patent System,” by The Editorial Board, New York Times; * “Corruption in Drug Patents: Take Away the Money,” critique of NYT editorial by Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research;
*** “Low Wages and High Costs Clash in the Home Health Care Crisis for Aging Americans,” by Kimberly Adams, NPR’s Marketplace;
*** “How to Communicate With People Suffering From Dementia,” by Carol Hymowitz, Wall Street Journal interview with Creative Care author Anne Basting;
*** “Bourne Manor Receives ‘Red Hand’ Abuse Citation,” by Cynthia McCormick, Cape Cod Times/USA Today Network.
2. THE BOOKMOBILE: *** Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live. by Becca Levy (William Morrow/ Harper Collins);
*** No Color Is My Kind: Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston by Thomas R. Cole, University of Texas Press;
*** The Super Age: Decoding Our Demographic Destiny, by Bradley Schurman (Harper Business);
*** Right Place, Right Time: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Home for the Second Half of Life, by Ryan Frederick, Johns Hopkins University Press.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Ex-Next Avenue Editor Rich Eisenberg and This Chair Rocks author Ashton Applewhite to be Honored, May 12; *** Aged in Kentucky, Rhonda Miller’s New WKU Public Radio Podcast; *** Katy Butler’s The Art of Dying Well (Scribner’s, 2019) Hits Earnings Milestone (after 4-5 printings and foreign-language editions); *** Ke “April” Xu named first Chinese Community Correspondent for Documented, New York’s only newsroom “with and for immigrants”; *** USA Today’s New Reporter on Nursing Homes Is Jayme Fraser, as Leticia Stein moves to Philadelphia Inquirer;
4. WORDS FROM THE WISE: *** New York Times “New Old Age” columnist Paula Span on covering the generations beat.
5. STORYBOARD PLUS: Recent stories from the 2021-22 Journalists in Aging Fellows Program:
*** “South Florida Seeing an Uptick in Rates of HIV Diagnoses Among People 50 and Older,” by Verónica Zaragovia, WLRN Public Radio;
*** “Nature Gurlz Walk for Sisterhood and Better Health and Wellness Amid the COVID-19,” by LaShawn Hudson, WABE Atlanta Public Radio;
*** “How Older Workers Can Push Back Against the Reality of Ageism,” by Annie Nova, CNBC;
*** “Casa de los Abuelos/House of the Elders” by Ian Torres, Telemundo Oklahoma;
*** “D.C.’s HIV+ population is aging. Doctors say that’s a good sign,” by Chelsea Cirruzzo, Axios Washington DC;
*** “Omicron Leads to Changes at Agencies Serving LGBTQ Elders,” by John Ferrannini, Bay Area Reporter.
1. THE STORYBOARD
*** “Dying for Care,” by Letitia Stein, Jayme Fraser and Nick Penzenstadler with Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, USA Today (March 10, 2022): The Dek: The first-ever USA Today analysis of the eldercare business shows how pervasive failures escaped notice during the pandemic.
The Lede: “COVID-19 marched into almost every nursing home in America during last winter’s surge, when 71,000 residents died – the most of any wave of the pandemic. Still, at nearly one-third of the nursing homes reporting outbreaks, no one died. Which facilities fared better or worse, and why? USA Today reporters spent a year seeking answers in the data and the documents, in interviews with industry experts, government overseers, nursing home workers and families of the dead. In a first-of-its-kind analysis, they identified nursing home ownership webs invisible to consumers. They scored the performance of every nursing home in America to probe questions of corporate responsibility left unanswered by government regulators and dozens of research papers on the pandemic’s 140,000-plus nursing home deaths. Here’s what they found.”
Except That: Although the USA Today Network team is receiving much praise for this project, once again only subscribers can read it, once again raising the question of a paywall “business model” at every turn that blocks journalism’s essential charge of serving the public’s right to know.
* That blocked access to the package noted, what is accessible is a free webinar with the story’s lead USA Today reporter on the project, Letitia Stein, being held Thursday, April 28, 1-2 p.m. Eastern/ 10-11 a.m. Pacific. The event, titled “Dying for Care’ in America’s Nursing Homes,” will be held by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
According to the website, Stein, who recently moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer, as senior health editor, “will show how an original data analysis and an exhaustive reporting effort revealed a pattern of unnecessary deaths that compounded the pandemic’s brutal toll. Reporters will leave with fresh ideas and strategies for covering nursing homes in their communities, as new variants loom and policymakers roll out new regulations.”
Stein and her crew found, summarizes the Center’s webinar page, that “one nursing home chain based in the Midwest died at twice the national average, according to figures reported by the company to the federal government. While the company, Trilogy Health Services, later claimed the figures were wrong, it had gone further than other major chains in reducing staffing at the 115 nursing homes it operates in the U.S., with residents receiving 45 minutes less care a day on average, according to the investigation. Such cuts typically allow companies to maximize profits while parring costs — the real estate company behind Trilogy is readying a historic stock offering on Wall Street this year.”
*** “Save America’s Patent System,” by The Editorial Board, New York Times (April 16, 2022): Of the US patent system, we tend to think: a topic that blandly goes into the policy weeds where nothing of interest has gone before. But, as a recent investigation by the House Oversight Committee found, says NYT, “Twelve of the drugs that Medicare spends the most on are protected by more than 600 patents in total. . . . Many of those patents contain little that’s truly new. But the thickets they create have the potential to extend product monopolies for decades. In so doing, they promise to add billions to the nation’s soaring health care costs — and to pharmaceutical coffers.”
The editorial states, “For all the hand-wringing over how to lower prescription drug costs in recent years, little has been said about the patent system or its many failings. Put simply: The United States Patent and Trademark Office is in dire need of reform.” Although the NYT editorial offers jarring information, as we report below, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that the newspaper’s editorial board does not go far enough.
What the Times does report is that among the appalling abuses permitted by the patent office – an agency that spins a revolving door allowing industry executives to swing in an out of government regulatory positions. And the practice of approving poorly examined patent applications, for example, allowed Theranos to receive dozens of patents for a process that didn’t work and led to a scandal inspiring two trials and a miniseries.
Under the agency’s new permanent director, patent attorney Kathi Vidal, says the Times, “There’s a fresh opportunity to modernize and fortify the patent system.” First, it needs to “enforce existing standards . . . for what deserves patent protection in the first place.” The story explains, for example, “Nearly 80 percent of the drugs associated with new patents between 2005 and 2015 were not new.” Too often, manufacturers make minor, even dubious, changes in a pharmaceutical formula or the drug’s delivery mechanism and file for a new patent to artificially extend its exclusive patent protection. Long called “me-too” drugs, they often lead to boosting, not reducing, the prices.
The government, says the editorial, should eliminate potential conflicts of interest that pose “a real risk to the integrity of the patent office. The most recent example of that comes from the Trump administration appointee Andrei Iancu. During his tenure, the patent office used its discretionary powers to deny a challenge to a patent held by a company that his former law firm represented. He then returned to that firm as soon as his time in government was up.”
The Times also calls on the government to “improve the process for challenging bad patents,” and it recommends greater interagency collaboration, such as with the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.
* The NYT editorial on the underreported flaws in the patent system piqued this editor’s attention enough to check in on one of its sharpest critics over the years, and indeed he posted an immediate response. In his April 18 blog headed, “Corruption in Drug Patents: Take Away the Money,” CEPR’s Dean Baker, wrote, “It’s great to see the New York Times recognize the abuses of the patent system. It would be even better if it opened its pages to discussion of alternative mechanisms for financing innovation. “
Baker asserts, “While patents can be a useful tool for promoting innovation, when huge sums are available by claiming a patent, we should expect there will be corruption, in spite of our best efforts to constrain it. This means that we should limit their use and try to ensure that we only rely on them where patent monopolies are clearly the best mechanism to promote innovation.” He says the current US system echoes the same kinds of corruption that undermined the centralized schema of the Soviet Union.”
A reformed patent system, Baker says, “should rely on publicly funded research, rather than patent monopolies when it comes to prescription drugs and medical equipment. In addition to promoting corruption, these monopolies create the absurd situation where many lifesaving drugs that would sell in a free market for $20 or $30 dollars, instead sell for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars. (Solvaldi, a breakthrough drug for treating Hepatitis C, sold here for $84,000 for a three-month course of treatment. A high-quality generic version was available in India for $300.)”
He adds, “The situation is made even worse by the fact that we typically have third party payers. This means that patients needing treatment have to persuade a government bureaucracy or private insurer to pay for an expensive drug that would cost just a few dollars in a free market.”
Baker offers the sort of outside-the-box analysis that can trigger new questions for reporters to expose some of the in-the-weeds systematic failures needing to be whacked. Beyond this short blog, his more thorough critique of the U.S. patent system and alternative approaches is available in Chapter 5 of 2016 book, Rigged, which he makes available free.
*** “Low Wages and High Costs Clash in the Home Health Care Crisis for Aging Americans,” by Kimberly Adams, NPR’s Marketplace (April 8, 2022): The Lede: “America’s home health care industry is in crisis. The country’s population is aging rapidly: By 2040, the number of people 65 and older will nearly double, according to the Urban Institute, and the number of adults 85 and older will nearly quadruple.”
The Nutshell: “But while demand for in-home health workers is growing, the industry is struggling with a staffing shortage, due in part to low wages. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the median annual pay for home health and personal care aides was $27,080 in 2020. A recent study by PHI National predicts there will be 1 million openings for residential care aides from 2019 to 2029, “more new jobs than any other occupation in U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan, [which] would set aside $150 billion for home health care.”
A Quote: Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance: “The reality is, we’ve never invested in the ability of families to afford the care that they need. . . Coming out of the pandemic, we have this unbelievable opportunity to invest in care, raise the wages of the workers and expand access to these services. . . We currently have over 800,000 people on waiting lists waiting for these services . . . But because the programs are so underfunded, and we have this workforce shortage.”
Adams Asks: “Usually, when there are not enough workers in a particular field, it pushes wages up because those workers are in higher demand and they can demand higher wages. Therefore, more people might go into that industry because those wages go up. Why isn’t that happening here?
Poo: “Most home care workers actually work through . . . Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services . . . And if that program isn’t adequately funded, people can’t get access to the services and workers can’t get better wages. We also have an economy where 60% of the workforce earns less than $50,000 per year, and it’s barely a living wage. And so how are those people, those families going to afford the care that they need for their families if they’re barely making ends meet, right. . . ? They’re going to rely on public programs like Medicaid.”
*** “How to Communicate With People Suffering From Dementia,” by Carol Hymowitz, Wall Street Journal (April 14, 2022): Dek: Anne Basting says the key is to not ask questions that force those with Alzheimer’s to remember facts. Instead, focus on creative and emotional communication.
The Lede: “One of the most painful parts about caring for somebody with Alzheimer’s disease is the feeling that communication with that person is impossible.”
The Nutshell: MacArthur “genius” Anne Basting “believes that it doesn’t have to be that way. The problem, she says, is the way we try to communicate. By using storytelling, theater, music and other arts, she believes, caregivers and family members can “invite what’s still there rather than get stuck on what’s missing.”
Who?: Basting, a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is founder of TimeSlips, a nonprofit that has trained more than 1,000 people in 49 states and 23 countries to engage creatively with older people. She describes her approach in her book, Creative Care: A Revolutionary Approach to Dementia and Elder Care(HarperCollins, 2020).
A Quote: Basting said, “People living with symptoms of dementia may not be able to access rational language or answer questions that require them to remember facts. But with storytelling, song and other arts, you are shifting to emotional communication. You’re inviting people to use imagination as a language and encouraging them to express themselves freely without worrying about right or wrong answers to questions. For people who’ve been shut down, the arts can be a lifeline, an invitation back into the world. We need the arts to be poured into the water of our healthcare system.”
*** “Bourne Manor Receives ‘Red Hand’ Abuse Citation,” by Cynthia McCormick, Cape Cod Times/USA TODAY NETWORK (April 6, 2022): The Dek: Accusations of Abuse, neglect surface as Cape Nursing Homes Deal with Low Staffing. (The paywall may block readers from full story.)
The Lede: “The ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic may be waning for now, but many nursing homes are struggling more than ever. And it is the frail and elderly residents of these long-term care centers who are taking the brunt of the pain.”
The Nutshell: “From filthy rooms and unexplained bedsores to broken bones and bruises, and from delayed, cold meals to long waits after calls for assistance, the health, safety and dignity of nursing home residents are at risk as staffing levels remain low, ac- cording to inspections reports.”
Some Facts: “The federal government’s website, Medicare Compare, said that seven out of 16 nursing homes on Cape Cod are rated below average or much below average based on performance in three areas: inspections, staffing and quality measures. One of the seven nursing homes, Bourne Manor Extended Care in Bourne, also has a ‘red hand’ designation that signifies it has been cited for abuse — one of 14 nursing homes in the state to be identified in that way by Medicare Compare. The federal website said that Bourne Manor had 29 health citations . . . within the last 12 months. The average number of health citations is 9.8 in Massachusetts and 8.1 in the United States.”
2. THE BOOKMOBILE
*** Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live. by Becca Levy (William Morrow/Harper Collins): Yale’s Becca Levy, PhD, is the social psychologist responsible for the widely cited finding that people who reach late life with very positive views of aging live on average a stunning 7.5 years more than those holding very negative feelings about old age. Since then, key aspects of her widely-praised studies has been independently replicated, and she has conducted much meticulous follow-up research showing, for instance, that beliefs about growing older can be improved in ways affecting the aging process, including in the way genes function.
Levy’s discoveries about the mind-body connection have largely until now been available to the public in medias interviews, while only professionals would be aware of her detailed work through academic journals and lectures. Breaking the Age Code, though, is aimed at a public bound to be fascinated by her revelations that , as her website says, “many health problems formerly considered to be entirely due to the aging process, such as memory loss, hearing decline, and cardiovascular events, are instead influenced by the negative age beliefs that dominate in the US and many other countries.”
Gerontologist Jeanette Leardi blogged about the book, quoting Levy, “Age beliefs don’t exist in a vacuum; they occupy the thrones of our minds, which are the control rooms for our bodies. They are part and parcel of how we code aging. They affect how we, as a culture and individuals, design, structure, and experience old age. This is why their effects ripple out in such significant ways, changing not just how we remember, but how we behave, including whether we pass on our knowledge to others.”
For press information and review copies, contact Jessica Cozzi, email: jessica.cozzi@harpercollins.com ; phone: (212) 207-7558
*** No Color Is My Kind: Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston by Thomas R. Cole, University of Texas Press, with new preface by the author: This absorbing tale might well have been subtitled, “Houston, We Have a Solution—to Segregation.” The book, updated for the Black Lives Matter era from its 1997 first edition, tells the Hollywood-worthy saga of how Cole, a Jewish medical ethicist and historian, revived one of the great but lost episodes of the civil rights movement. He chronicles how the desegregation of Houston was led by young Black activist whose fraught life and heroic story would fall into obscurity over the decades, as bipolar disorder stole his sanity and credibility.
Today Cole is distinguished gerontologist and author (the Pulitzer Prize-nominated The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America; Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders). But in 1984, he was teaching a course for medical students about common mental health afflictions at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. For the class on bipolar, or manic-depressive disorder, a disheveled and angry guest patient, age 52, described his decades of decline, he said, “under stress of poverty, racism, alcoholism and mental illness.”
Responding to questions about his life, Eldrewey Stearns declared he was writing a memoir on how he had led the successful struggle against Jim Crow in Houston, first by organizing the city’s student lunch counter sit-ins [https://tinyurl.com/rtpbryra] then beginning to wave across the South. While everyone else in the classroom dismissed his claims as “delusional,” Cole noted that despite Stearns’ shabby appearance, “his diction was sometimes learned, even elegant.” Well beyond the cliché of being “well-spoken,” Stearns held a law-school degree. Eventually, Cole discovered that every claim he made was true.
Stearns’ story resonates with today’s cries against police brutality. As a 27-year-old law student at Texas Christian University, his civil rights journey began in August 1959, with a routine traffic stop for a broken tail light that escalated into his senseless beating and arrest. Remarkably, only a year later, with protests for integration snarling with canine fangs and police fire-hosings of protesters gushing through America’s television screens, Houston quietly integrated. Local business leaders were persuaded that racial strife would impede the town’s reputation and development, just as the new NASA space center and its new Major League Baseball expansion team would bring Houston much otherwise positive national attention.
At first, Cole had no idea at first that he’d help revive a nearly lost story of the American civil rights struggle. He writes, “My own academic interests in history, aging and autobiography had recently sensitized me to the special potential of life stories for both historical research and psychological growth.” Growth, he would discover, sometimes painfully, that would develop for both men.
Cole began with a modest offer to help Stearns to get his autobiography, a confusing and disjointed draft, in order. Although he replied, “I doubt that you’re up to it . . . But, then, I’m not exactly in a position to refuse,” he said yes. A dozen years of meetings, stress, psychotic episodes, and slowly emerging trust ensued before Stearns eventually agreed that Cole could advance the project most effectively as a biography, with his subject’s approval at every stage. UT Press brought out the first edition came in 1997, alongside with a documentary film by California Newsreel.
Eventually moved to the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston for some year, where Cole recently stepped down as director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas. He’s continuing to teach there, splitting his time with duties as Spiritual Director at Congregation Beth Israel.
Stearns died last year at age 89, as the new edition was going to press. His dedication in the book reads, “I take great pride in the fact that I am of European and African descent. . . . I am an original American. I am a racial hybrid. Nothing more. No less. Perhaps, true live.” No Color Is My Kind was his original title.
Journalists can request a review copy and media kit from Joel Pinckney, Senior Publicist,University of Texas Press: telephone (512) 232-7634, or via their website: https://utpress.utexas.edu/.
*** The Super Age: Decoding Our Demographic Destiny, by Bradley Schurman (Harper Business) is deemed an “earnest study” by Publisher’s Weekly, who’s review continues, “Schurman busts myths about the modern idea of a secure retirement and argues that the economic realities for people over 65 are much grimmer, citing that, for instance, 22% of Americans have less than $5,000 in retirement savings.”
The CEO of a business research and advisory firm, also named The Super Age, Schurman notes that by 2050, the Super Age era will count one in six people worldwide over 65 years old.
Schurman writes in his preface, “Population aging is a reality, and it’s happening all around us at an alarmingly fast pace. Whether you realize it or not, your life and the lives of your family and friends, as well as your neighbors and coworkers and all other global citizens, have a role in this great demographic transition. This period of humanity will present great challenges for some and will be particularly difficult for public officials and governments that have to grapple with policy decisions that may be unpopular, including reimagining social welfare programs that would have been considered untouchable a generation ago. However, the opportunities for social enrichment and economic change far out- weigh the costs, especially for the private sector, but only if individuals and organizations are willing to accept them as well as meet the realities of this new era head-on.”
PW notes, “He calls for quality health care, secure and safe housing, workplaces that are better suited to older workers (by taking age into account in diversity and inclusion strategies), and antidiscrimination policies that factor in ageism. His insistence on a more thoughtful approach to an aging society is buoyed by his optimism and his dedication to justice and care for all citizens: ‘The future may be gray,” he writes, ‘but it’s incredibly bright.’” Request a review copy from: Theresa.Dooley@harpercollins.com.
*** Right Place, Right Time: The Ultimate Guide to Choosing a Home for the Second Half of Life, by Ryan Frederick, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021: Among the self-help and personal finance guidebooks issued annually by various publishers, this one arrived with an impressive group of endorsements by leading authorities, such as director of MIT’s AgeLab, and columnist Kerry Hannon. In the book’s foreword, Paul Irving, chairman of the Milken Institute Center for the Future of Aging, wrote, “Frederick has been a passionate advocate for change. With an understanding that demographic challenges and 21st century opportunities call for transformation in design, development, and use, he imagines a different future of living.”
In the book, Frederick, CEO of a consulting firm, SmartLiving 360, based in Austin, Texas, combining real-life stories illustrating key issues in choosing appropriate and well-designed locations and recommends a range of interactive tools to evaluate one’s living situation. Request a review copy and media kit from Dana Lewis, dana@stanton-company.com; phone (310) 314-0100.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Kudos to Rich Eisenberg and Ashton Applewhite for honors they’ll receive from Presbyterian Senior Services (PSS), May 12, in New York City. Eisenberg, the “unretired” former managing editor of PBS Next Avenue and prolific blogger, especially on the financial side of longevity, will receive the Impact Award. It “recognizes an individual whose leadership in positive aging is inspiring people 50 and older to live with passion and purpose.”
Applewhite, blogger and author of This Chair Rocks earned this year’s Maggie Kuhn Award. Named for the late founder of the Gray Panthers, the award is “presented to an individual or organization who exemplifies advocacy and civic commitment to the older populations.” A co-founder of the Old School Anti-Ageism Clearinghouse, says the PSS website, “Applewhite is a leading voice of the emerging movement to make age discrimination as unacceptable as any other prejudice.”
*** With Her New Podcast, Aged in Kentucky, Rhonda Miller has graduated from her own podcasting course by starting her own. Miller, a producer/reporter for WKU Public Radio based on Bowling Green, emailed us, “I finally started a podcast, after teaching a five-week online podcasting course for several years for the Creative Nonfiction Foundation. I taught that course based on radio features.” She credits that her Journalists in Aging Fellowship, a project of GBONews publisher the Journalists Network on Generations and the Gerontological Society of America, “inspired me to focus more on aging.” Miller will profile “people and places that have been in the Bluegrass State a few years or many decades.”
The first episode (39 mins) of Aged in Kentucky, is headlined “Monk at Gethsemani Has Goal of ‘Amounting to Nothing.’” It spotlights Brother Paul Quenon of the famous Abbey of Gethsemani. That’s where he arrived at age 17 in 1958, and was mentored by spiritual leader, Thomas Merton, author of the bestselling book, The Seven Storey Mountain. Quenon emerged as poet and photographer. He has a new volume of poetry out.
Although the initial podcasts will appear as stories on the WKU site, Miller allowed, “I still have to develop its own page and distribution, connected to our public radio station, a step at a time.” Presumably, she can follow the steps enumerated on one of her own class handouts. People can contact her at rhonda.miller@wku.edu .
*** Katy Butler Facebooked that her book, The Art of Dying Well, (Scribner’s, 2019) “has ‘earned out’ — sold enough copies to cover the advance, so future royalties come to me. I think it’s in its fourth or fifth printing.” She reports that the volume has been translated so far into Slovenian, Korean, German, Dutch and Chinese. It followed her first book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door (Scribner, 2013). The Kindle version of The Art of Dying Well,” she says, still stands high on relevant FB categories: “#3 in hospice and patient care, #16 in Aging Parents, and #27 in Emergency Medicine.” Butler adds,” I guess Emergency Room docs see many elderly people who might do better with palliative care, physician house calls and medical care at home, the PACE program, and/or hospice.”
*** Ke “April” Xu is the first Chinese Community Correspondent for Documented, “New York’s only newsroom that creates journalism with and for immigrants.” Previously, as a reporter for Sing Tao Daily (NY), she garnered multiple awards and fellowships, among them participation in the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program. At Documented,” she’ll produce online audio and video media.”
*** USA Today’s New Reporter on Nursing Homes Is Jayme Fraser, replacing Leticia Stein, who recently moved to the Philadelphia Inquirer, as senior health editor. Fraser, a data reporter at the paper, who lives in Northern Montana, emailed, “I expect part of my focus this year to be on nursing homes, but I’m broadly interested in health and cover other inequity issues, too. Most of my time is spent on investigative projects or other longer-term work.” She spent much of the last year working freelance on the USA Today team that produced the recent “Dying for Care” investigative project on nursing home deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic.
A multimedia reporter, Fraser “has covered higher education, nonprofits, wrongful convictions, medical marijuana, drug policy, health care, religion and governments, ranging from local and state to tribal and federal.” She’s reported on government for the Houston Chronicle and was a Hearst Journalism Fellow after doing internships with The Seattle Times metro desk, the politics team at The Oregonian, and wrote for the Missoulian and The Cody Enterprise. According to her Muck Rack page, “In high school, she co-founded a bilingual, monthly newspaper for El Golfo, a Mexican fishing village on the verge of rapid development.” And in 2015, she was an IRE Award Finalist as part of a Houston Chronicle team that investigated the jail suicide of Sandra Bland after a questionable traffic stop.”
4. WORDS FROM THE WISE
GBONews ran across an interview with New York Times “New Old Age” columnist Paula Span. The a 22-minute audio on the American Society on Aging website was conducted in 2020 by ASA’s CEO Peter Kaldes.
Regarding coverage of the population 60 or 65 and older, Span observed, “This is not a minority concern; it has broad implications for towns, cities and the nation. . . Something that’s powerful in covering age is to write about old people. In the same way reporters are learning that if you need five people in a story they should not all be white guys – in the same way they should not all be under 40. Age is also part of diversity.”
5. STORYBOARD PLUS
Following are recent stories from the 2021-22 Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, the collaboration of GBONews publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations, and the Gerontological Society of America.
*** “South Florida Seeing an Uptick in Rates of HIV Diagnoses Among People 50 and Older,” by Verónica Zaragovia, WLRN South Florida public radio (April 6, 2022):
The Lede: “After Earvin “Magic” Johnson received an HIV-positive diagnosis in 1991, he made an announcement in a room full of sports reporters that people remember to this day: ‘Because of the HIV virus that I have obtained, I will have to retire from the Lakers,;’ Johnson said. That press conference is included in an Apple TV+ documentary series coming out on April 22. . . . Fortunately, at 62, Johnson has now been alive more than three decades since that day. Today, he continues to raise awareness, combat persistent stigma and help others age with the virus by talking about testing and treatment. He’s especially concerned about the impact of the virus on Black and Latinx residents of the U.S.”
The Nutshell: “Testing for HIV dropped a lot during the pandemic . . . Health officials in South Florida are monitoring a worrisome upward trend in HIV diagnoses among people 50 and older. In this 2020 report from the Florida Department of Health, the state wrote that the number of new HIV diagnoses over the past five years decreased except among two age groups: people 30 to 39 years old (8% increase) and people who are 50 and older (7% increase).”
Key Quote: “Said Alina Orozco, . . . ‘A lot of providers don’t necessarily think someone in their 50s or 60s is somebody at risk and they don’t always think to test. . . This is an illness that can affect anyone at any point’ . . . Orozco pointed out that ageism in healthcare is one factor. Another is that older people don’t see themselves as at risk.”
And: “’A lot of these are among men who have sex with men. Some of these are actually among women,’ said Luigi Ferrer, [of] the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County, who oversees HIV education. “After 50, they are not concerned about becoming pregnant any more. They’re not using safer sex practices. What we’ve seen is that the percent of diagnoses are going up.”
The Punchline: An ad campaign in New York City declared: “Age is not a condom.”
*** “Nature Gurlz Walk for Sisterhood and Better Health and Wellness Amid the COVID-19,” by LaShawn Hudson, WABE Atlanta Public Radio (March 18, 2022, text with photo essay by story author, plus 7:25 min audio):
The Nutshell: According to the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging, during the pandemic, 19% of adults between 50-80 years old have experienced depression and sadness. Results from the poll also suggest at least 28% of seniors say they feel more worried and anxious. In addition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, social isolation and loneliness in older adults are serious public health risks. . . In an effort to combat social isolation and protect their health, a group of senior women in Southwest Atlanta have been holding each other accountable by prioritizing their physical and mental health through daily exercise.”
A Quote: Cecilia Houston-Torrence, the founder and coordinator of the Nature Gurlz, . . . had an anxiety attack in April 2020, while watching the news and decided to take action . . . , forming the Nature Gurlz group. “The next day there was the three people, next day four, five, six, we’re up to 60 people now,” said Houston-Torrence. . . The Nature Gurlz, who range in age from their early 60s to mid-80s, have been meeting daily to walk between two to three miles at the Cascade Springs Nature Preserve. . . Some of the women have always maintained a healthy lifestyle, while others are breast cancer survivors, have arthritis, hypertension, diabetes and other chronic illnesses.”
*** “How Older Workers Can Push Back Against the Reality of Ageism,” by Annie Nova, CNBC (March 20, 2022):
The Nutshell: “Nearly 80% of older employees say they’ve seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, according to the most recent survey by AARP. . . Ageism is one of the most unfair paradoxes in the labor market: People put in decades of hard work and then find themselves penalized for having done so. . . . Even as the economy bounces back from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, older workers are having a challenging time getting re-hired. The percentage of jobseekers in February above the age of 55 who were ‘long-term unemployed’, . . . was more than 36%, compared to around 23% among those between the ages of 16 and 54. (Around a quarter of the workforce is older than 55.)”
And: “Unsurprisingly, the discrimination has psychological consequences. Around 6.3 million cases of depression globally are thought to be attributed to ageism, according to the World Health Organization. . . . Research shows that older people exposed to subliminal negative age-stereotypes are more likely to perform poorly on cognitive and physical tasks, said Dr. Vânia de la Fuente-Núñez, manager of the global campaign to combat ageism at the World Health Organization. On the flip side, de la Fuente-Núñez said, studies find that individuals with more positive self-perceptions of ageing experienced better functional health and greater longevity.”
A Quote: “Age stereotypes that we internalize can generate expectations that act as self-fulfilling prophecies,” de la Fuente-Núñez said. “The more we know about aging, the less fearful we become,” she said. . . And while some deterioration in memory and processing speed is common as we climb up the years, comprehension, reading and vocabulary are some of our abilities that remain stable — or even get better — with time, research shows. . . Fortunately, there are more ways than ever for older workers to continue advancing, said John Tarnoff, a career transition coach.”
*** “Casa de los Abuelos/House of the Elders” by Ian Torres, Telemundo Oklahoma(March 31, 2022, in Spanish with English subtitles): La Casa de Los Abuelos is a new project run by the Casa de la Cultura in Tulsa, Okla., created to promote a safe space for older Hispanic adults. It will have arts classes, dance, exercise, and offer Meals on Wheels, “which will provide food so that those who attend do not spend long hours without food. The idea arose from Francisco Treviño, director of La Casa de la Cultura. Francisco’s organization has been in charge of providing cultural classes to the Hispanic community in Tulsa.”
*** “D.C.’s HIV+ population is aging. Doctors say that’s a good sign,” by Chelsea Cirruzzo, Axios Washington DC (Feb. 28, 2022): The Lede: “More than half of people in D.C. living with HIV are 50 years and older, which is a positive sign, according to the health care providers who treat them.”
Why it Matters: D.C. has aggressive goals to slash new HIV transmissions and ensure that 95% of Washingtonians with HIV know their status, are in treatment, and have reached viral suppression by 2030.
A Quote: “HIV is seen as a chronic disease at this point,” says Clover Barnes, senior deputy director of DC Health’s HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and TB administration. “We are excited that people are living longer … despite having HIV.”
Some Facts: In its latest HIV surveillance report, D.C. showed slowed declines towards its goals of reducing HIV transmission in the District. Still, the city has seen a significant drop in new infections and a significant increase in viral suppression since its peak in cases in 2007. That same report also showed that D.C.’s HIV positive population is aging.
The Stats: In 2020, 4,864 people 55 and older knew they were HIV positive, with 32 new cases in 2020. Among those newly diagnosed, 1 in 4 were men having sex with other men, 2 in 5 are women, and 4 in 5 are Black.
*** “Omicron Leads to Changes at Agencies Serving LGBTQ Elders,” by John Ferrannini, B.A.R. (Bay Area Reporter, Feb. 16, 2022):
The Lede: “The Omicron variant of COVID-19 was certainly not what anyone wanted — especially for LGBTQ seniors and the agencies serving them. . . A year ago, when the Bay Area Reporter published a series of articles on various issues of import to LGBTQ seniors — including the loneliness that comes with social distancing, getting needed services to the vulnerable, and housing, the nation was optimistic that the roll-out of vaccines would bring a return to living like it’s 2019. Now, policymakers are playing catch-up. . . The more laissez-faire approach that the federal government is taking to the pandemic in the post-vaccine world — as well as the record number of cases caused by Omicron that started in late November and continues disrupting the workforce nationwide — is leaving local nonprofits and agencies to figure out for themselves how to respond and stay as safe as possible.”
A Quote: “Kathleen Sullivan, PhD, a lesbian who is the executive director of the LGBTQ senior housing and community services agency Openhouse, told the B.A.R. that ‘we haven’t had — fortunately — too many” cases among staff. . . .’ Unfortunately, the new Openhouse + On Lok Community Day Services Center . . . has had to pivot, for now, to a virtual space. ‘We do home-based programming, including daily calls to our community members, art at home projects, meals delivered, and connection to online programs through Zoom,” Sullivan wrote in a February 11 email. ‘Our in-person programming will commence again on March 4.’”
Data: Sullivan said that taking care of people’s mental health remains a difficult challenge. She pointed to a 2021 survey of LGBTQ older adults funded by the San Francisco Department of Disability and Aging Services, Horizons Foundation, and the Bob Ross Foundation that found . . . , ‘During COVID, the percent of older adults with self-reported symptoms of depression increased to 13.5%, almost three times more than pre-COVID. [People of color] respondents and respondents with a disability had the highest percentages of people with possible depression, both during and prior to COVID and the stay-at-home mandate.’”
What’s More: “Vince Crisostomo, a queer man who is the director of aging services with the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and is the program manager of its Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network, discussed last year how SFAF was advocating for more housing subsidies in San Francisco for 300 households in Fiscal Year 2021-2022. ‘We were successful in that advocacy,’ Crisostomo, 60, said, adding that, ‘We were actually able to connect a few of our 50-Plus members who needed support coming out from COVID, who’d fallen behind.’”
The Generations Project: Wes Enos, 35, based in New York City, [relaunched] the Generations Project, which seeks to connect LGBTQ people intergenerationally. Enos said, regarding 2021. ‘We had a mix of virtual programming that catered to people interested in being part of virtual programs, and we created a hybrid model of storytelling events” . . . The agency’s intergenerational writing party is still virtual, and so are its storytelling workshops. But its live storytelling events are in person, said Enos. . . . He also stressed that people from all over the country can sign up for virtual events on the Generations Project’s website.”
The 2021-22 Journalists in Aging Fellows Program was made possible by the following foundations: The Silver Century Foundation, the Archstone Foundation, the RRF Foundation for Aging; The Commonwealth Fund, and The John A. Hartford Foundation. Click here for a complete, ongoing list of Journalists in Aging Fellowship headlines with links to the stories.
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 2022 JNG. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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