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2022-02-01
Human Rights Watch;
This report describes patterns of abuses against older people affected by armed conflict in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, South Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine. It also draws on the situation of serious protracted violence in two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, Myanmar security force atrocities against older ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine State, and the experiences of older refugees in Lebanon displaced by conflict in Syria. It also includes abuses against older people in the 2020 armed conflict in the ethnic-Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
2022-02-23
RRF Foundation for Aging;
We are excited to share with you RRF Foundation for Aging's (RRF) latest issue brief in a series of publications describing the Foundation's approach to grantmaking and improving the quality of life of older people. Home Front and Center: Supporting Access to Affordable and Quality Housing gives an overview of the rise of housing insecurity for older adults, describes some of the work the Foundation is funding to promote safe and affordable housing, and invites others to join us.Our Approach to Increasing Safe, Affordable Housing for Older AdultsWhile the issue of accessible housing confronts millions of Americans, the problem is especially acute for older adults. But for those whose access to safe and affordable housing has been limited by economic inequities and discrimination, such as communities of color and LGBTQ+ individuals, the disparities of housing insecurity loom much larger. And with the end of COVID-19 eviction moratoriums, the threat of homelessness confronts many older adults with low or fixed incomes. For these reasons, and more, studies show that the ranks of homeless older people are rising fast, despite a decline in homelessness in other age groups.RRF Foundation for Aging has been at the forefront of collaborating with organizations and individuals developing and advocating for promising approaches to bolstering housing access, security, and equality for older people. Our grantees are helping older tenants of Chicago organize for better housing, advocating for stronger rights under federal housing laws, gathering data on affordable housing availability, and much more.Read our latest issue brief to learn more about our Three Strategies for More Affordable, Supportive Housing and the innovative work of our grantees in this important area.We look forward to partnering with you on this critical work!Click "Download" to access this resource online.
2022-06-17
Economic Policy Institute;
This interactive chartbook provides a statistical snapshot of race and ethnicity in the United States, depicting racial/ethnic disparities observed through: (1) population demographics; (2) civic engagement; (3) labor market outcomes; (4) income, poverty, and wealth; and (5) health. The chartbook also highlights some notable intersections of gender with race and ethnicity, including educational attainment, labor force participation, life expectancy, and maternal mortality. The findings are bracing, as they show how much more work we need to do to address longstanding and persistent racial inequities. Most charts include data for five racial/ethnic groups in each of the charts—white, Black, Hispanic, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN). In the charts and text, "Americans" refers to all U.S. residents, regardless of citizenship status.As these efforts illustrate, collecting and maintaining data sources that are representative of the entire U.S. population is an essential first step toward overcoming the invisibility, neglect, and lack of understanding experienced by many communities of color. Future work on this project will involve identifying comparable data from alternative sources that fill in as much of the missing information in the chartbook as possible.Click "Download" to view this online, interactive resource.
2022-04-26
California HealthCare Foundation;
Through CalAIM (California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal), a multiyear initiative to transform the Medi-Cal program, managed care plans now have the option to offer any of 14 Community Supports that provide person-centered services to address a variety of social drivers of health. Several of these Community Supports could help older adults and people with disabilities remain in their own homes, participate in their communities, and live independently in the setting of their choice.To support understanding and increased uptake of these services over time, this report provides an overview of and evidence summary for six Community Supports most relevant to supporting independent living for older adults and people with disabilities, including:Respite Services. Short-term services aimed at providing relief to caregivers of those who require occasional or temporary assistance or supervision.Nursing Facility Transition / Diversion to Assisted Living Facilities. Services that help people remain in the community by facilitating transitions from a nursing facility back into a home-like, community setting or prevent nursing facility admissions for those with imminent need.Community Transition Services / Nursing Facility Transition to a Home. Nonrecurring support, including setup expenses, to avoid further institutionalization and help people remain in the community as they return home from a licensed nursing facility.Personal Care and Homemaker Services. Supports for people needing assistance with daily activities, such as bathing, dressing, cooking, eating, and personal hygiene.Environmental Accessibility Adaptations (Home Modifications). Physical adaptations to a home when necessary to ensure health, welfare, and safety, or promote greater independence at home through improved functionality and mobility.Medically Supportive Food / Meals / Medically Tailored Meals. Meal services to help people achieve their nutritional goals at critical times (such as after a hospital or nursing facility stay) to regain and maintain their health.
2022-02-23
Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University;
This report from the Baker Institute's Center for the United States and Mexico explores how new immigration policies can help maintain a strong economy as a growing number of older Americans leave the workforce.
2022-01-20
Wisconsin Literacy;
Toolkit GoalsImprove the health, health care, and caregiving for people who have dementia.Help family members and caregivers communicate better with health providers, people with dementia, and family members.Use this toolkit to:Improve your health literacy.Communicate better with doctors, family members, and people you care for.Plan and coordinate care.Find resources that can help you and the people you care for.Click "Download" to view this resource online.
2022-04-06
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine;
Nursing homes play a unique dual role in the long-term care continuum, serving as a place where people receive needed health care and a place they call home. Ineffective responses to the complex challenges of nursing home care have resulted in a system that often fails to ensure the well-being and safety of nursing home residents. The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on nursing home residents and staff has renewed attention to the long-standing weaknesses that impede the provision of high-quality nursing home care.With support from a coalition of sponsors, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine formed the Committee on the Quality of Care in Nursing Homes to examine how the United States delivers, finances, regulates, and measures the quality of nursing home care. The National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality: Honoring Our Commitment to Residents, Families, and Staff identifies seven broad goals and supporting recommendations which provide the overarching framework for a comprehensive approach to improving the quality of care in nursing homes.
2022-04-21
Commonwealth Fund;
Racial and ethnic discrimination has a significant impact on the health of people of color, affecting mental health and contributing to high blood pressure, negative health behaviors, and early aging. For Black older adults, the cumulative effects of race-related stress experienced over the course of a life can increase the risk for mental and physical health problems.In health care settings, experiences of discrimination can include providers dismissing a patient's symptoms or health concerns, offering different treatment based on a patient's type of insurance, or not providing care in a patient's preferred language.We analyzed findings from the Commonwealth Fund 2021 International Health Policy Survey of Older Adults to examine experiences of racial discrimination in health care settings among Latinx/Hispanic and Black older adults. (See "How We Conducted This Study" for more details.) To provide some cross-national context, we first detail the extent to which older adults in 11 high-income countries believe their national health system treats people unfairly because of race or ethnicity. We then look more in-depth at the United States and report on older Americans' experiences of discrimination and the consequences of health providers' unfair or dismissive treatment. Finally, we consider steps that U.S. health system leaders, health care educators, policymakers, and others can take to address discrimination and dismantle systemic racism in health care.
2023-04-26
Feeding America;
In this report, we provide a broad overview of the extent and distribution of food insecurity among seniors (those 60 years of age and older) in the United States in 2021, along with trends over the past two decades using national, state-level, and metropolitan-level data from the December Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS).We concentrate on two measures of food insecurity: food insecurity and very low food security (VLFS). These are based on the full set of 18 questions in the Food Security Supplement (FSS), the module used by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to establish the official food insecurity rates of households in the United States. We define food insecurity by three or more affirmative responses and very low food security as eight or more affirmative responses in households with children and six or more in households without children. All VLFS persons are also included in the food insecure category.
2023-04-26
Feeding America;
In this report, we provide a broad overview of the extent and distribution of food insecurity among individuals between the ages of 50 and 59 in the United States in 2021, along with trends over the past decade and a half using national, state-level, and metropolitan-level data from the December Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS). This study complements the annual report on senior hunger from Ziliak and Gundersen (2023).We concentrate on two measures of food insecurity: food insecurity and very low food security (VLFS). These are based on the full set of 18 questions in the Food Security Supplement (FSS), the module used by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to establish the official food insecurity rates of households in the United States. We define food insecurity by three or more affirmative responses and very low food security as eight or more affirmative responses in households with children or six or more in households without children. All VLFS persons are also included in the food insecure category.
2022-08-23
National Academy for State Health Policy;
States play a critical role in fostering the development of well-coordinated, comprehensive, and high-value health care systems that help individuals achieve good health outcomes and high quality of life, including remaining in their own communities as long as safely possible. For many people with complex conditions, achieving those goals requires coordination across both the health care and long-term services and supports (LTSS) systems, as well as the support of family or unpaid caregivers.Family caregivers have a valuable role in both health care and LTSS systems. They provide services to their family members that might otherwise need to be provided by paid caregivers. They can be the first to recognize new symptoms, as well as changes in health conditions and individuals' ability to care for themselves. They often make it possible for their family members with self-care needs to live at home. However, current health care and LTSS systems are fragmented and not well-designed to support family caregivers, often causing them to become care coordinators across multiple systems. In addition, family caregivers may need training to recognize signs and symptoms that signal a change in care needs and a defined path for bringing that information to the attention of the care team.In recent years, states have taken steps to improve family caregiver engagement in care delivery and planning. As of 2022, 45 states and territories have enacted the Caregiver Advise, Record, and Enable (CARE) Act, legislation that requires hospitals to inquire if a patient has a family caregiver and, if so, include the caregiver in the discharge process and instruct them about the medical and nursing tasks they will do at home. Although the CARE Act is enacted in 45 states and territories, it lacks enforcement, which presents an opportunity for states to better support the act. State agencies can establish policies which align with the act, that are designed to ensure that family caregivers are included in care planning both initially and throughout the care process.State Medicaid agencies have put in place services, such as structured family caregiving programs, that help family caregivers deliver and coordinate care by providing the caregiver with payment, individualized training, and a means for providing ongoing input into care planning. Area agencies on aging (AAAs) can also develop connections with home- and community-based services and health systems to assist in expanding referral systems to support caregivers. State policymakers hope that by adopting these policies they will not only help individuals achieve better health outcomes and quality of life but also help health systems reduce avoidable hospitalizations and readmissions — and ultimately contain cost by improving the delivery of care.
2022-11-16
Economic Policy Institute;
The Older Workers and Retirement Chartbook shows the risks to retirement security and disparities in retirement preparedness, and explores the links between labor market challenges facing older workers and retirement insecurity.Updated February 9, 2023The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the plight of many older U.S. workers who cannot afford to retire yet are stuck in bad jobs or forced to leave the labor force before they're ready.The Older Workers and Retirement Chartbook from the Economic Policy Institute and the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis documents the risks and disparities in retirement preparedness among demographic groups. It offers a comprehensive look at the connections between labor market challenges facing older workers and retirement insecurity, using 33 charts to bring light to the problem.Before the COVID-19 pandemic, 4 in 10 Americans 55 and older were in the labor force, their highest participation rate in a half-century, the chartbook finds. The upward trend in labor force participation in recent decades reflects in part greater opportunities for older workers who want to keep working—but it also reflects retirement insecurity among some workers. The authors document how many older workers who cannot afford to retire face diminishing job quality and earnings due to a loss of bargaining power."Workers may work longer to close the retirement income gap, but this is neither a fair nor a realistic solution to a broken retirement system," says Monique Morrissey, EPI economist and co-author of the report. "Policy choices have weakened unions, eroded the real value of the minimum wage, and allowed employers to shift more responsibility for retirement onto workers. These all contribute to older workers' declining bargaining power."Black, Hispanic, women, disabled, and LGBTQ workers are at greater risk of hardship at older ages because of systemic problems. Black and Hispanic workers are more likely to lack access to retirement plans or have access to less generous plans. Lower lifetime earnings make it harder for workers of color, women, and people with disabilities to save for retirement. Women's greater caregiving responsibilities and longer life spans also put them at higher risk of old-age poverty despite closing the retirement plan coverage gap with men. LGBTQ seniors face adverse effects of past and present discrimination, including less access to spousal benefits."Everyone faces significant risks as they age, even well-off Americans," explains report co-author Siavash Radpour. "It is unrealistic to expect all older workers to save enough to guard against the possibility of losing their jobs, retiring during a market downturn, being widowed or divorced, or incurring expensive medical or long-term care needs."The authors outline several targeted policies that can improve the lives of older workers, including:Enforcing age discrimination laws;Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to help more adults without dependent children;Lowering employer health care costs for older workers;Changing performance metrics used to evaluate training programs that lead them to favor enrolling younger workers;Creating a dedicated Older Workers Bureau in the Department of Labor to help identify and address challenges facing older workers.But targeted policies are only one part of the solution. "Retirement insecurity comes from systemic problems, and these require systemic solutions," Barbara Schuster, co-author of the chartbook, explains. "Improving working conditions for all workers is vitally important, as is strengthening social insurance programs that offer critical protections."Broader policies include:Pursuing full-employment macroeconomic policies;Protecting workers' right to collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions;Raising the minimum wage;Enacting paid leave and scheduling policies to ensure workers can take time to care for themselves and their families;Increasing caregiver supports;Fixing the patchwork unemployment system;Better protecting workers from injury and illness;Expanding and removing barriers to accessing Social Security and SSI benefits;Ensuring access to affordable health care and long-term care.
