Martha Stewart Opines on The CLASS Act
Martha Stewart writes today on long-term care and shares her support for The CLASS Act as part of health care reform.
Vital Aging Forum: Transforming Long-Term Care Financing, You're Invited, Feb. 9th
Tuesday - February 9, 2010
10:30 am to 12:30 pm
Rondo Community Outreach Library, 461 N. Dale St. St. Paul, MN 55103
Presenters:
LaRhae Knatterud, MN Department of Human Services (moderator)
Patti Cullen, Care Providers of Minnesota
Stacy Becker, Citizens League
Thomas Devine, DAVID Agency
Finding effective and affordable new models in long-term care financing will require changes in both individual behavior and policies. Come to this forum to understand the issues and opportunities for long-term care in the future.
Patti Cullen will explore current and future long-term care models. Stacy Becker will talk about aging-in-place and, particularly, how these models deal with memory care. LaRhae Knatterud will offer the state perspective of long-term care policies and the direction it plans to go. Tom Devine, will discuss long-term care insurance.
Kathryn Roberts - The Woman Behind Ecumen
Twin Cities Business Magazine features an interesting article this month on Ecumen president and CEO Kathryn Roberts. A lot of neat things have happened under her leadership. Read the full article here.
Photo Credit: Craig Bares
What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?
Photo Credit: beforeidieiwantto.org
What make some people more aware of their own mortality than others? What motivates people to take action in their lives? What do people want to do before they die?
Two women armed with a Polaroid camera are finding out what people want to do before they leave this earth. Its 3,000 photos are simply elegant. Visit the site and gallery here.
Jim Klobuchar - The Face of an Unexpected Samaritan
A Story By Jim Klobuchar
He was a lanky kid shambling to the microphone. He walked with a gait the young sometimes adopt when they’re going to speak without high expectations of getting it right.
He’d come to Minneapolis from a small town in northern Minnesota to enroll in a basically marvelous program called Urban Homeworks, which in part reclaims boarded or foreclosed houses in the city. With volunteers, it rebuilds the houses to make them livable and affordable for rent or sale to low income families.
Daniel was one of the volunteers, living on site for two years as an urban neighbor, working on the projects, learning a trade and where possible befriending the poor who were trying to reconstruct their lives. Apart from his work, he told his audience, he was committed to doing something once a week to build a community with his housemates and the families. He would also meet with his neighbors to learn about things related to God and the economically poor.
One thing he had learned, he said, is that a gift is not a possession. He did not immediately explain how that truth had come to him.
Apart from its housing, Urban Homeworks tries to rehabilitate troubled men and women with the offer of community and whatever resources are available to it.
Daniel introduced, in absentia, a 55-year-old man we will call Fred, a neighbor of his in the housing development. He came to Minnesota from New York with his brothers and sisters, lived briefly in an orphanage and has been in and out of adult care homes and shelters and homelessness and since. He was diagnosed at different times with depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.
We sometimes call these people losers. Daniel called him a man who struggles to find a spiritual life and hungered for talk sessions over coffee. It was his quiet cry for companionship. Once engaged he was aggressive with his opinions, but Daniel had to admit that he didn’t know many people in today’s society who aren’t. The young man called him a friend.
In midwinter last year the young man and his friends realized that Fred had no coat worth the name. They prowled the thrift stores without finding an adequate fit. Daniel called his family in northern Minnesota and a week later received a box of used winter coats. One of them fit the older man. “It actually met his needs and made it all the way around him. I felt good about myself. After three weeks we’d found the right coat. We’d done something for a neighbor.” They shared congratulations all around.
Two days later Daniel spotted the man wearing another coat. It was dirty and nondescript and barely covered his belly. “What happened to the coat we gave you?” he asked. The older man stared at the floor. “I traded it for this one,” he said.
Daniel remembers the scene and his fury. He demanded, “After all of that work to find it, you did what?” The older man was silent. “Then he raised his head,” Daniel said. “He had an equally frustrated look that seemed to say ‘how dare you? And then Fred, the man who had slept on park benches and in alleys, said “the other guy was homeless. He sleeps outside, and I sleep in here. He needed the coat more than I did.”
The young man at the microphone teared up and stood motionless, recalling the scene, how he had barely trusted himself to speak his apology. The realization came hard, the piercing truth of a life’s lesson learned. It came from a man who was mentally troubled and couldn’t read, now saying of another man he’d met “he needed it more than I did.”
It was there in front him, the young man said, “what loving your neighbor as yourself looks like.” What he saw was the beauty and the humanity of the power of love when it shines clear and unmistakable in the eyes of a battered man.
Martin Luther King Day 2010 - Longevity Has Its Place
The day before he was assassinated at age 39, Martin Luther King shared these words . . . "There is a place for longevity, but I'm not concerned about that right now" . . . His longevity endures. Watch the 1 minute and 17 second clip below:
The Fun Theory and Changing Behavior
The Fun Theory suggests that the easiest way to get people to do something like recycle or get more exercise is to make it more fun. Check out the following video brought to us from Volkswagen:
Dr. Marion is now an iPhone app
At CES last week, it was great to see that caregivers weren't forgotten in the midst of all the flash-bang of techno gadgetry. The concerns and issues of the growing millions of family caregivers who help care for an older relative were acknowledged and discussed at both the Silvers Summit and the Digital Health Summit in Las Vegas.
I had a chance to chat with Marion Somers, Ph.D., better known as Dr. Marion a geriatric care manager who's taken her 35+ years of experience and turned it into accessible iPhone apps. Elder 411 consists of over 500 pieces of advise organized by topic such as mobility, legal, hiring help, and letting go to either prevent issues or solve as they occur, as well as care for the caregiver. The Elder 911 app dispenses info related to elder crisis management such as transfer trauma, dealing with doctors, hospital discharge & the after-care of emergencies.
The apps cost just a couple of bucks. If you don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can download Apple's iTunes for free, then purchase & view apps from any computer.
Dr. Marion's e-advice sounds like a timely resource for the very busy caregiver! ~Helen Rickman
Digital Health: 3 Global Trends
At last weekend's Digital Health Summit in Las Vegas (part of CES, the huge consumer electronics show), three global trends emerged with important ramifications to how we age. Paul Ceverha, director at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Continua Health Alliance member, defined the trends as
1. The evolution of the health system (regulatory reform): Payment reform will move to more bundled payments to encourage coordinated care. This would have big impact & be welcomed by seniors who currently must navigate the complicated world of private insurance, pharma options, medicare, donut holes, etc.
2. Revolution in care: the home as hub concept or medical health home. Personal health records (PHR), a comprehensive all-in-one-place record of one's health history, lab results, stats, etc., can help elders organize their records, especially since as a group seniors tend to be the biggest users of health care, often being seen by multiple providers. While Google & Microsoft have created software to capture PHR data, insurance companies will need to incentivize to get people to use, let alone make it easy to use & access.
3. Impact of new science: New forces such as genomic sciences are collapsing sequencing costs to make customized diagnostics possible & more affordable for the average joe. Healthcare will continue to move towards being evidence-based and consumer-directed. The four Ps will dominate: predictive, participatory, preventative & personalized.
A recurring theme at the summit: the way we think about getting care is going to change. Outlets like retail health, home monitoring, personal coach, and medical home are but a few of the new. All seem to involve or include a technology component. When it comes to health technology, how can we help seniors go from being a passive observer to an active user? Share your ideas here. ~Helen Rickman
Not Part of a Lost Generation - Food for Thought on the Future
This is only a 1 minute, 44 second video and is brilliant. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward. Thanks to Ecumen's Sue Ferguson for sending it this way.
A palindrome reads the same backwards as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.
This video was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled "u @ 50" by AARP. This video won second place. When they showed it, everyone in the room was awe-struck and broke into spontaneous applause. So simple and yet so brilliant. Take a minute and watch it.