Last week, I had the honor of speaking at the Louisville Innovation Summit, where the theme was “Creating the Future of Aging Care.” This was my first time visiting Louisville, which is the home base for several large organizations in healthcare and long-term care.
Much of the conference was interesting (you can see the program here) but what captured my interest and imagination the most was this: in his keynote, Paul Bennett, the Chief Creative Officer of IDEO, urged the city of Louisville to take the lead in reimagining aging.
Now, in truth I’m not really sure what he has in mind when he says this and I suspect that it’s different than what I think of. To begin with, he explained that IDEO is launching a global project on aging called The Powerful Now. Here’s how the project is described on their site:
“AGING IS BEING REDEFINED.
NOT AS A PATH OF DECLINE, BUT ONE OF RENEWAL.Doesn’t that match your own hopes, wishes, and desires? To become more curious. More engaged. More vibrant. Physically and emotionally. Deeply connected to the ideas and the people who matter to you.
The Powerful Now is about bringing the power of creativity to how we conceive of, design, and experience aging. If you were to add up all the people who are fifty years and older, they would be the third largest economic superpower on Earth.”
Hm. I am all for reimagining aging in positive terms. But what I care most about is solving the age-associated problems that cause older adults and their families the most excess suffering.
What I want to see is a city that creates or implements effective systems for optimizing the health, function, wellbeing, independence, and dignity of older adults. And I want to see a city that succeeds in doing so especially for older adults who are experiencing:
- Medical complexity, meaning multiple chronic illnesses or health problems such that they often encounter the hospital or emergency room
- Chronic impairments of mind, body, or both, meaning dementia or chronic impairments of physical function
- Difficulty managing ADLS and/or IADLs (which is usually due to acute or chronic impairments of body or mind, obviously)
- Residence in assisted-living or a nursing home.
The images we use as we articulate our vision of better aging are important. Paul Bennett spoke of how moved he was by seeing older adults in a Shanghai park, waltzing as they did their group exercise.
Very nice. But I want to see images of people with walkers waltzing. I want more images of people who need support, and yet are still living vibrant lives and contributing to the community around them. You might have mobility impairments and need services and because you are GETTING the services you need, you are able to volunteer and help your community benefit from your wisdom or experience or education or even just presence as a friendly person.
I also want to see a city that effectively helps family caregivers support their older loved ones with the problems above.
Taking on such a project at a city level actually makes a lot of sense. To help older adults live their best lives, even as they face the common challenges of aging, you need to integrate health care, social services, housing, employment policies (esp as regards family caregivers), and much more. Seems to me that a city would be a good laboratory for experimenting or attempting to implement best-known practices. Once one city has made progress, it can serve a model for other cities.
So if Louisville wants to do this, what needs to happen?
I actually know very little about what enables cities to mobilize on a big project like this. But if I were to get going on this, I’d start by making a list of what’s needed, and then I’d look for promising approaches to meet each need. Then I’d work on implementing those approaches and making a plan to assess how well it’s working as you go along, a la Plan-Do-Study-Act method.
(After drafting this post I found that AARP does have a network of “age-friendly cities” and offers a toolkit here. If anyone knows how well that’s been going for those cities, post a comment! And do they ever have conferences related to this project??)
A list of what’s needed and promising approaches would make a good agenda for a future conference.
What’s needed for a city to better support an aging population
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