Articles
The Journal on Active Aging brings articles of value to professionals dedicated to older-adult quality of life. Content sweeps across the active-aging landscape to focus on education and practice. Find articles of interest by searching the article archives in three ways: Enter a keyword in the articles search bar; click on search by topic; or type a keyword or phrase in the general search bar at the top of the page.
Topic- Wellness
Healing practices: The evidence for Chinese medicine and healthy aging by Kelly Clady-Giramma, MS, LAc, Dipl OM
In China, long life and older adults are revered and aging embraced. Prior to the rising popularity of Western culture there over the past few decades, birthday celebrations were reserved for the very old. While everyone is young once, the thinking goes, it takes a lot of luck and talent to grow old-talent that deserves to be celebrated. Unsurprisingly, the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) philosophy of longevity is not synonymous with the contemporary Western obsession with "anti-aging." Taoism, an ancient spiritual system that promotes living in harmony with nature and gave rise to TCM, encourages functionality and feeling young on the inside rather than simply looking young on the outside. TCM offers many tools and advice around longevity. It advocates balanced life in all its aspects. It promotes connection to nature and its cycles as well as respect for our circadian (daily) rhythms. TCM also encourages us to take personal responsibility for our health and be proactive. Many more people and physicians are turning to personalized integrative medicine today, focusing on healthy lifestyles and the best of various healing traditions. Integrative medicine combines treatments from conventional allopathic, or "Western", medicine with other evidence-based healing modalities from around the world, including TCM. For active-aging organizations, TCM's complementary approaches may open additional avenues to support clients in living longer, healthier lives.
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Shining examples: ICAA and NuStep name 25 "Best in Wellness"
Twenty-five communities have been recognized with the 2019 ICAA NuStep Beacon Award honoring their "Best in Wellness" achievements. The Beacon Award was created as a joint venture between the International Council on Active Aging (ICAA) and NuStep, LLC, a longtime partner of ICAA and a manufacturer of recumbent cross-trainers used in healthcare, senior living and fitness settings. Launched in 2019, the ICAA NuStep Beacon Award program is awarded to communities that successfully foster a wellness culture and an environment that supports wellness for all who live and work there. Among the Beacon Award winners, the top five communities have also received the ICAA NuStep Pinnacle Award for their particularly exceptional contributions. "It is a pleasure to honor the top 25 wellness communities," says Jane Benskey, marketing communications specialist at NuStep, LLC. "Their recognition of the value and importance of creating cultures where wellness is not a program in a room, but rather a way of life, is having a lasting and positive impact on many lives."
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Meet Moorings Park: The #1 wellness-based community in North America by Sally Abrahms
Creating an outstanding wellness culture in senior living takes a lot of heavy lifting, vision and commitment. And, as industry experts see it, it is something critical to cultivate. The International Council on Active Aging's 2019 ICAA State of Wellness Survey queried 305 senior living communities about the value of having services, programs and environments that support a wellness culture. They say it improves the well-being of residents, keeps their community relevant in a changing industry, differentiates them from competitors, attracts younger adults and garners extra income through wellness programs. Another ICAA survey, conducted in 2018, reveals that 59% of senior living communities plan to have a wellness lifestyle-with-options-for-care model (versus a healthcare-first-with-wellness-features) within the next five years. Currently, 64% of industry leaders believe wellness is a "must have." In its first year, ICAA and NuStep, LLC, a leading manufacturer of recumbent cross-trainers, have given the ICAA NuStep Beacon Award to those that best foster, and imbue, wellness into their senior communities. And the number one wellness-based community in North America went to Moorings Park, a life-plan community in Naples, Florida.
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What is wellness? Defining and acting upon a clear and comprehensive vision (with accompanying guidelines "Creating your blueprint for a wellness-based community," based on ICAA Forum 2019 recommendat
What is wellness? How you answer this question has a direct impact on everything your organization does--from your mission statement, to programming, to the built environment, to staffing, to educating your team. Perhaps you are among the nearly 60% of senior living staff and management who said in a 2018 International Council on Active Aging survey that they expect their community to transition to a wellness-based model with care by 2023. Whether you intend to change your business model or to create or evolve a wellness culture, everything you develop will reflect your view of wellness. ... Clarity in what wellness means to your organization bolsters everything you do to create, implement or evolve a business model whose primary focus is wellness. ICAA's new definition of wellness offers you a starting point. The accompanying guidelines ["Creating your blueprint for a wellness-based community"] will help you implement it.
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Is transcendent design the future of senior living? by Colin Milner
Is music icon Jimmy Buffett set to disrupt the slow-moving USD$372-billion senior living industry? That was the question I asked myself when I heard earlier this year that Minto Communities and Margaritaville Holdings were developing a $1-billion active-adult community in Daytona Beach, Florida. Latitude Margaritaville, Buffett's community for the "55 and better" customer, will eventually provide up to 6,900 homes for "Parrot Heads" (the name the singer's fans call themselves). .. What impact will this new senior living brand have on the industry? It's too early to tell, of course. Yet we can rest assured that these communities--which promise a "no worries tropical vibe"--will be developed around the centerpiece of having "fun" and creating memorable experiences. Buffett and partners are realizing their communities around a "transcendent design" model. Are you familiar with this approach? I was not until Joseph F. Coughlin, PhD, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of MIT AgeLab, enlightened me a few months ago. I invited this visionary expert to help us all better understand transcendent design.
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"Are we there yet?" Measuring progress and success by Kelly A. Stranburg, MEd, CEP, CSCS
In my last Journal on Active Aging article, we reviewed the value of and potential strategies for communicating the message of culture change. Part of telling your story and communicating your culture-change journey is being able to identify goals, measure progress and celebrate achievements. But how do you even measure something as broad and challenging as the culture change of an organization? How do you know when you've reached the end of this journey? That you've succeeded? That you’ve achieved what you set out to do?
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