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- Program profiles
Embracing wellness: NuStep Pinnacle Award winners find keys to engagement
How do we best promote quality of life for older adults? Increasingly, organizations devoted to this mission find answers to this question in a culture of whole-person wellness. NuStep, LLC, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, presents its NuStep Pinnacle Award every year to groups whose efforts engage older adults in making wellness their way of life. Established in 1998, the Pinnacle Award highlights organizations that successfully integrate whole-person wellness into their settings and develop an organizational culture of wellness. Embracing wellness as an all-encompassing culture allows Pinnacle winners to respond to the changing needs of individuals and engage them in leading healthier, more vibrant lives.
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"Stepping Up Your Nutrition": Highlighting the impact of nutrition for falls prevention
Good nutrition is vital to healthy aging--that's one of the foundational beliefs in active aging. Among the ways in which a nutritious diet contributes to healthy aging, falls prevention is one that active-aging professionals may overlook and older adults may not realize. A public-private partnership has created Stepping Up Your Nutrition(TM), a program to educate individuals ages 50 and older about nutrition and its impact on fall risks.
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Voyaging via virtual reality by Marilynn Larkin, MA
Excited by growing scientific evidence that virtual reality (VR) is a useful tool for cognitive and physical rehabilitation, I was eager to look at VR programs that are being marketed directly to the active-aging industry for use with residents. While none have yet undergone rigorous large-scale studies, one in particular has been piloted in multiple settings, and will soon be tested in a Harvard University-led study. Rendever, said to "give older adults a window to parts of the world that they're missing," is notable in that it was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students who won a USD$25,000 Healthcare Innovations prize for the program in 2017. Maplewood Senior Living, which owns and operates 14 senior living communities in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Ohio, is among the first to pilot Rendever. I recently talked with Maplewood's Brian Geyser, APRN-BC, MSN, vice president of Clinical Innovation and Population Health, about the program, why he decided to deploy it and what the outcomes are so far.
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The Art of Life: Creating a joyful, interactive performance for all ages by Kerry Hughes Thomas, MA
A community art project launched in 2017 enriched the lives of 950 participants and their audiences with the inspiring message that we all are part of life's big picture. Senior living residents from two communities in Atlanta, Georgia, collaborated with participants of all ages and abilities from the community-at-large to create a multidisciplinary performance blending dance, theater, music and visual art. And the active-aging professional who initiated the project envisions further opportunities to celebrate living well through creativity.
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The Thrive Institute encourages older adults to flourish
Notre Dame du Lac has served as "a place of renewal, refreshment and healthy living" for many years. Built shortly after 1900 in Worcester, Massachusetts, the building was first a convent for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, who informally referred to the site as "God's Acre." Efforts to preserve du Lac's character earned praise when the building was extensively renovated before opening as an assisted-living center in 2000. "The building and programs have adapted to each era, but always with a mission towards the health of elders,"says the website of Notre Dame Health Care (NDHC), the nonprofit organization that today carries on the holy sisters' mission. Deeply committed to person-centered care for the whole person, NDHC promotes social, physical, intellectual, emotional, environmental and spiritual well-being. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur's core mission also includes a commitment to "educate for life." Launched in fall 2014, The Thrive Institute embodies NDHC's holistic-health and education commitments with its "Thrivin" series of programs for older adults.
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Technologies to connect socially: Seven profiles of products, programs and providers by Tammy Ditmore
In 1998, Jack York's friend Leslie Sweeney talked him into donating computers to an assisted-living community in California. There, York was startled to discover how "disconnected and lonely" the residents were and disheartened because he knew conventional technology couldn't help much. So Leslie, Jack and his brother Tom launched It's Never 2 Late (iN2L) in 1999 with the idea that people deserve interaction no matter how old they are. York says they spent a decade or so trying to "figure out what we were doing." Eventually, iN2L learned how to integrate hardware, software, videos, music and personal components into an adaptive computer system now used in more than 2,500 senior living communities in the United States and other countries.
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