ChangingAging.org

Simple things can work surprisingly well.
Consider this insight from Atul Gawande for example…
When there is no way of knowing exactly how long our skeins will run—and when we imagine ourselves to have much more time than we do—our every impulse is to fight, to die with chemo in our veins or a tube in our [...]

Americans often cite Japan as the country with the most respect for elders. In fact, there is considerable prestige given to older people in Japan and even a national holiday in their honor. There are also some embarrassing lapses which expose a gap between rhetoric and practice. The BBC reports…
Tokyo’s reputed oldest woman has [...]

Al Power checks in early with this gem…

A decade past, Prince saw delirium as a positive force–falling in love. Soulja Boy took it a step farther: “That’s when I start to fall.” Now that’s a concept geriatricians can latch onto.
The real dangers of geriatric delirium are spelled out in detail in this week’s issue of [...]

This blog gets some mighty powerful comments….
My 92-year-old mother with advanced dementia still lives at home and attends an Eden-accredited day centre. Six weeks ago I received a call from the acting manager to say they were finding my mother’s behaviour very challenging and wanted to bring in their ‘Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory’ team to [...]

Here is something new from the Eden Alternative.
Become the expert in your home for culture change; not just for yourself but for your team, your organization and the Elders you serve. Learn to overcome the challenges in the complex world of long-term care by creating an action plan specific to your home.
It does not matter [...]

The people behind Paro the Robot Baby Seal seem to have retained the world’s best public relations firm. They’ve scored stories in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
I don’t get it.
Or, maybe, I do get it and I hate admitting the ugly truth.
American culture sees aging as primarily a matter of technical [...]

My take on where health care reform is headed seems an awful lot like a skit from an old Monty Python LP, that starts like this:

(Ominous music)
Voice Over: (Michael Palin) June the 4th, 1973, was much like any other summer’s day in Peterborough, and Ralph Melish, a file clerk at an insurance company, was on his [...]

On Monday, NPR broadcast the results of a poll
that shows that nearly 3/4 of physicians surveyed favor some
sort of public option for health care insurance, either alone
(10%) or in combination with private options (63%).
Widespread support was also found among AMA members, even though
the organization has an official stand against a public option.
Polls of the [...]

Wow. We’ve gotten a lot of email responding to Dr. Bill’s video post debunking internet conspiracies about euthanizing older adults. It’s been overwhelming positive and constructive feedback. But I’m amused to find that a few folks out there truly seem immune to reason. One anonymous emailer went so far as to accuse Bill of lying [...]

Look folks, this is an easy rumor to dispel. No one in Congress is promoting legislation that would allow or lead to government euthanization of older adults. It’s a gross distortion of a completely sensible provision to provide Medicare coverage for patients to sit down with their doctors (not government agents!) and discuss what kind [...]