Issue Category: Age-Friendly Public Health

TFAH Celebrates Older Americans Month: Powered by Connection

In his presidential proclamation designating May as Older Americans’ Month, President Joe Biden said “Older Americans are the backbone of our Nation. They have built the foundation that we all stand upon today”.

This annual celebration, first declared in 1963, provides the opportunity to not only recognize older Americans’ contributions to our society, but also to highlight challenges and reaffirm our commitment to serving older adults across the country.

This year’s theme, “Powered by Connection,” helps us focus on the profound impact that meaningful connections have on everyone’s well-being and health, including older adults. The  U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community underscores the importance of this engagement. While social isolation can have the same effect as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, a study in Scientific American found that strong social connections can boost a person’s lifespan by 50 percent!

The public health sector is leading in many states and communities to enhance connectedness among older adults, recognizing the value of engagement for people’s health and well-being. Many organizations are leading efforts to build inclusive neighborhoods and to include policies for mitigating social isolation into state and community health improvement plans. Public health agencies are partnering with area agencies on aging, YMCAs, or other community-based organizations to improve access to facilities and programs that provide services to older adults, particularly those in underserved communities. Some are leading efforts to pilot and expand intergenerational programs, connecting older people with younger individuals who provide training on technology, for example. Local health departments are partnering with parks and recreation, transportation, and housing colleagues to build inclusive public spaces and ensure they have adequate lighting, space, and other features to bolster safety for older adults and their families.

Trust for America’s Health’s Age-Friendly Public Health Systems 6Cs Framework offers a practical guide for public health actions to improve social connectedness:

  • Creating and leading changes in social isolation and loneliness among older adults by improving awareness of the health implications and motivating existing older adult systems and infrastructures to address social isolation.
  • Connecting multi-sector partners to strengthen ties between healthcare systems and community-based networks and resources addressing older adult social isolation and loneliness.
  • Collecting data and developing a more robust evidence base on the implications and importance of addressing social isolation.
  • Coordinating existing programs for older adults to improve screening, access and service delivery to older adults and strengthen ongoing education and training on social isolation.
  • Communicating how to translate current research into healthcare practices to support the reduction of social isolation among older adults.
  • Complementing existing aging services to reach older adults where they are to reduce social isolation.

Social engagement is not just about having someone to chat with. It’s about the transformative potential of community engagement in enhancing mental, physical, and emotional well-being. By recognizing and nurturing the role that connectedness plays, we can mitigate issues like loneliness, ultimately promoting health across the life span for all Americans.

Ready or Not 2024: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism

Join a panel of experts on May 29, at 2 PM ET, to discuss the nation’s readiness for public health emergencies, examine the key findings of TFAH’s 2024 report, and discuss recommendations for policymakers.

The Ready or Not 2024: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism report identifies gaps in national and state preparedness to protect residents’ health during emergencies and makes recommendations to strengthen the nation’s public health system and improve emergency readiness. As the nation experiences an increasing number of infectious disease outbreaks and extreme weather events, the report found that while emergency preparedness has improved in some areas, policymakers not heeding the lessons of past emergencies, funding cuts, and health misinformation put decades of progress at risk.

Age-Friendly Public Health: The Podcast

In this episode of Age-Friendly Public Health: The Podcast host, Dr. J. Nadine Gracia, President and CEO of Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) is joined by guest Bill Armbruster, a senior advisor of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). Mr. Armbruster has been a key partner working with TFAH’s Age-Friendly Public Health Systems initiative team to forge lasting connections between public health and age-friendly community efforts. He is a crucial partner in the process toward better aligning our common goals of elevating the health and well-being of older adults through partnerships and collaboration across the age-friendly ecosystem. Listen to their conversation.

Read the transcript

Age-Friendly Public Health: The Podcast is a production of Trust for America’s Health’s (TFAH) Age-Friendly Public Health Systems Initiative. This quarterly podcast, hosted by TFAH’s President and CEO Dr. J. Nadine Gracia, will feature conversations with leaders in the age-friendly public health systems movement on challenges, opportunities, and model programs, with a focus on the role public health can play in helping older adults thrive.

You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or where ever you access your favorite podcast.

 

Trust for America’s Health Celebrates Healthy Aging Month

September is Healthy Aging Month. It is a time to pause, ponder, and consider the potential we have before us to take the concept of healthy aging to the next level. Healthy aging is often defined as “the development and maintenance of optimal physical, mental (cognitive and emotional), spiritual, and social well-being and function in older adults.”

What needs to happen to take all those components to the next level? Multi-sector collaboration, coordination, funding, and prioritization of the health and social needs of older people.

Collaboration: Most policy actors understand that policy and systems changes do not happen without unified, strategic planning and working across sectors to achieve the desired changes. The power of a collective impact approach is its ability to bring together the aging services, healthcare, public health, and community sectors to work together to assess and understand the needs of older adults in any given community.

Coordination: Once the above systems are assessed for their strengths or gaps in providing age-friendly services, sectors can come together to coordinate activities and interventions to reduce duplication and maximize the distribution of limited public resources for programs and services that support older people, their caregivers, and their families.

Investment: Funding is a much-needed aspect of providing systems and services that support healthy aging, but advocates face numerous challenges in securing additional funding for older adult programs. Since much of what happens in older age can be attributed to lifestyle choices in early age, funding healthy habits all along the life course is one way to reduce demands on the long-term care system. Unfortunately, the return on investment is also long-term and therefore often a hard one for policymakers to see and act on.

Prioritization of healthy aging, from birth to the end of life: This process may take the form of addressing the social and economic issues that impact health at the community level, as well as dismantling the systemic structures that lead to health disparities. Prioritizing healthy housing, access to nutritious food sources, quality education, quality healthcare, and other community supports that lift all people will inevitably improve the opportunities for all people to grow older with optimal physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and social health and function. It’s up to everyone to see ourselves in this process and make our communities better for all.

 

 

Indicators of Healthy Aging: A Guide to Explore Healthy Aging Data through Community Health Improvement

Collecting, analyzing, and translating relevant and robust data on older adults.

For over a century, public health interventions – from vaccines to food safety and vector control – have contributed to Americans’ longevity, and state and local health departments play a key role in supporting their communities by promoting healthy living. Healthy aging programs uniquely dovetail with local health department Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs).  Both allow health departments and partnering organizations to understand and address healthy aging priorities through data.

An analysis conducted by the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), found that most CHIPs include priorities that, while not specifically addressing older adults (e.g., 65 years of age and older), could be adapted for healthy aging programs. These priorities include chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer, as well as substance use, depression, and other mental health conditions.

To develop and strengthen age-friendly public health systems, a more comprehensive set of healthy aging indicators is needed to help health departments and community partners at the local, state, tribal, and territorial levels measure and identify population-level health disparities and inequities. Additionally, Community Health Improvement (CHI) partners need a robust, unified source of secondary data that aligns with healthy aging indicators to inform strategic and action planning.

This guide, developed by Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and with funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation, is designed to augment NACCHO’s Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP) framework. MAPP is the most widely used CHI framework among governmental public health departments and, increasingly, community-based organizations, nonprofit hospital systems, and community health centers that lead or engage in CHI processes. This also serves as a resource for health departments seeking to attain Age-Friendly Public Health Systems (AFPHS) recognition.

Download your free copy of the Guide.

Public Health’s Role in Supporting Family Caregivers

According to a September 2022 report by the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) and  the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, Chronic Disease Family Caregiving Through a Public Health Lens, there are 53 million family caregivers in America-that’s nearly one i five families. Furthermore, the number of caregivers will continue to rise as people aged 65 or older are expected to almost double by the year 2060. At that time, the nation will have reached a milestone of one in four people responsible for providing care for a family member with a chronic disease, serious illness, or a disability.

The report, which was supported by a grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation, found that caregivers are taking on caregiving responsibilities for adults with increasingly complex needs due to raising rates of chronic disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and other types of memory and dementia issues.

Caregivers in Need

Providing care for an ill family member is a demanding task often made more complicated by geographically dispersed families and the need for two wage-earners.

Source: Caregiving for Family and Friends – A Public Health Issue

According to a NAC and National Association of Chronic Disease Directors Roundtable, in 2020,23 percent of caregivers reported worsening health due to caregiving. Of those caregivers, 60 percent reported difficulty when addressing their own health needs. TFAH has recommended establishing a comprehensive paid family and medical leave policy that ensures paid time off to address family health or caregiving needs for all employees.

Equity in Caregiving

Of the nation’s 53 million family caregivers, an estimated 61 percent are Non-Hispanic white, 17 percent are Hispanic, 14 percent are African American, and 5 percent are Asian American and/or Pacific Islander. As the need for care grows, the need for caregiver systems that are integrated into the community, and culturally and language appropriate is critical. Innovations in technology, such as telemedicine and translation tools, can assist in allowing both long-distance and non-English speaking caregivers have the support they need from public health programs and their communities. Culturally designed approaches and relationship building within communities will enable greater understanding of, support for, and interaction with the nation’s caregivers.

How Can the Public Health System Support Caregivers?

Support for the nation’s caregivers is a public health issue especially in light of demographic changes that will make the need for family caregiving even greater in the future. The public health system has  a critical role to play in supporting family caregivers and their ability to provide care through care coordination and assistance integrating home care with more formal healthcare services. Public health systems should work to create family caregiving support infrastructure and should team with other entities that can have a role in supporting caregivers including healthcare systems and providers, insurers, community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, and employers.

Conclusion

Caregivers are a vital part of the nation’s healthcare system and need the support of the public health sector. Policies should support the nation’s existing and growing number of caregivers to allow them to provide care while protecting their own health, well-being, and financial security.

Additional TFAH Age-Friendly Public Health Systems initiative Resources on Family Caregiving

Michigan Conference Seeks to Advance an Interconnected, Age-friendly Public Health System

Michigan is a leader in the movement to create a more age-friendly public health system by creating partnerships throughout the health and public health sectors within the state. In October 2022, over 120 aging and health leaders and innovators gathered at Michigan State University for the state’s first-ever Strategically Partnering for Age-Friendly Health in Michigan Conference to collaborate on a shared vision to advance age-friendly policies and practices across the state.

The conference, jointly hosted by The Michigan Health Endowment Fund, Michigan Public Health Institute, and Trust for America’s Health, emphasized the need for age-friendly policies to benefit everyone, not just older adults, due to their focus on the social conditions that support optimal health.

One of the key themes of the conference was the importance of integrating age-friendly principles into the ecosystem of society and information sharing across care delivery, between hospitals and home care providers, for example. Dr. Aaron Guest, a national leader in aging and public health, spoke on the connections between social determinants of health and healthy aging, and the importance of creating an age-friendly environment that addresses the social and economic factors that promote good health and well-being.

Structural racism and health disparities were also discussed as significant obstacles to ensuring equitable access to care and culturally responsive, age-friendly care. Black older adults in Michigan experience lower rates of health insurance coverage and greater rates of chronic health conditions compared to their white counterparts. Furthermore, the Detroit Area Agency on Aging found that the death rate of Detroit adults in their 50s is 122 percent higher than the rest of the state.

Overall, the conference sought to chart the course for an age-friendly future within the state, acknowledging the challenges ahead but also the progress made, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on communities of color and older adults illustrates the importance of addressing the upstream social determinants of health and integrating age-friendly policies into public health systems.

TFAH is proudly committed to a continued partnership with the Michigan Public Health Institute and will continue to help support Michigan’s Age Friendly Public Health System initiative in the future.

This article is based on the Age-Friendly Conference Envisions as Interconnected Michigan blog, published by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

Read more on TFAH’s Age Friendly Public Health Systems and Age Friendly Public Health Systems Initiative Page.

Subscribe to TFAH’s Age Friendly Public Health Newsletter.

Trust for America’s Health Celebrates Older Americans Month

The month of May provides America with the opportunity to celebrate our families, neighbors, colleagues, and friends as we all age.  It is an opportunity to recognize and share the collective wisdom and rich history afforded by older age.  It is also a time to reflect on how we, as a nation, view ourselves as we age, and to reflect on how well we are working to create supportive environments for equitable health and well-being across the lifespan.

Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), as a non-profit public health policy, research, and advocacy organization committed to ensuring healthy environments for all individuals and communities, prioritizes the roles of the public health sector in creating such supportive environments.  We have seen the significant toll that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on not just the health, but also the social and economic well-being of older adults.  We commend the public health sector for actively addressing these challenges and working across sectors to collaboratively and equitably support our nation’s older adults, their families, and caregivers.

Older Americans Month offers us the opportunity to examine the public health practices that can be expanded to include older adults beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.  We must continue to elevate healthy aging as a core public health function, from collecting robust data on older adult health, to embedding multi-sector partnerships, to prioritizing and advancing health equity, to exploring how the social determinants of health can be framed with an aging lens.  And public health departments can continue to collaborate with America’s aging services network to support and build opportunities and options for more older adults to age in the communities and spaces of their choice.

TFAH will continue to explore new opportunities with state and local health departments to embed healthy aging within public health practice, to develop resources to support this engagement, and to advocate for policy changes to ensure appropriate authority and funding for these efforts.  For more information on TFAH’s Age-Friendly Public Health Systems initiative, please visit www.afphs.org.