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
De Hogeweyk: A "dementia village" integrates living, well-being and health by Colin Milner and Jenifer Milner
The spark began over 20 years ago at Hogewey care center in Weesp, a town of some 18,000 people in the Netherlands. In November 1992, along with a former director, Hogewey’s Yvonne van Amerongen and Jannette Spiering started talking about how to create a different kind of environment for older adults with severe dementia--one that would engage individuals and support quality of life.
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Communication: The key to building support for culture change by Kelly A. Stranburg, MEd, CEP, CSCS
In my last Journal on Active Aging article, I discussed how we divided into work groups and conquered nearly 200 ideas to thoroughly develop a strategy for creating change at Sharon Towers in Charlotte, North Carolina. Communication is the challenge I’ll address in this article. Let me first stress how imperative it is to communicate the why behind change and impending strategy when starting out on a culture-change journey.
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Creating strategy out of ideas by Kelly A. Stranburg, MEd, CEP, CSCS
At Sharon Towers, our nonprofit life-plan community in Charlotte, North Carolina., we are beginning to create our strategy for changing our culture. We have a task force of more than 60 individuals working on the initiative. We have created a vision statement. And we have brainstormed so many ideas of what we would like to see happen next that my office looks like one giant post-it note. Now is the time to take all these wonderful ideas and analyze, discuss and plot them. It’s a lot to discuss and figure out when the task force generated almost 200 ideas. How can a group of some 60-plus individuals tackle so many different ideas while still keeping a sense of urgency, commitment and passion? We divide and conquer.
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Friend or foe? Dealing with time by Kelly A. Stranburg, MEd, CEP, CSCS
In my last article, we learned about the power of brainstorming. Constant brainstorming has not only enabled us to generate direction for the culture-change journey at Sharon Towers, our not-for-profit continuing care retirement community in Charlotte, North Carolina, but also shown us how best to redirect ourselves when necessary. Additionally, brainstorming has allowed us to create a voice for and buy-in from team members and residents involved with this movement. My previous article addressed one of the greatest challenges of culture change as well. Time.
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Brainstorming for culture change by Kelly A. Stranburg, MEd, CEP, CSCS
At Sharon Towers in Charlotte, North Carolina, we have decided to shift our culture to position our community for continued success. ... We believe that, within Sharon Towers, the time has come to create a significant cultural change that positively impacts well-being for residents, older adults throughout the Charlotte market, and team members. The task force designed to spearhead this initiative has met many times to brainstorm possible answers to questions and what direction we should take even to start.
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"Why change? Why now?" by Kelly A. Stranburg, MEd, CEP, CSCS
We spend our days working with older adults—getting to know them, assessing their needs, mapping out engaging programs—and yet we have conversations that leave us perplexed and frustrated about the future of our industry. It is challenging as staff to predict what will happen. As the director of vitality and well-being at Sharon Towers in Charlotte, North Carolina, I am part of a culture-change team with the directive to strategically position our community for the future. The Journal on Active Aging has invited me to share our organization’s process of culture change with you.
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