Oct. 21 Web Event: Confronting Ageism in Health Care: A Conversation for Patients, Caregivers and Clinicians
The Covid pandemic has added visibility to longstanding age-related attitudes and practices that permeate the healthcare system and sometimes undermined the care and wellbeing of older adults in this country.
KFF Kaiser Health News and the John A. Hartford Foundation will host a 90-minute interactive web event on Age Discrimination in Healthcare starting at 12:00 noon Eastern Time Thursday October 21. Participate in an open, practical, and empowering conversation about this ubiquitous, systemic problem of age bias, discrimination, or stereotyping.
What does age discrimination look like in healthcare? It can be a thoughtless joke that makes an elderly person feel humiliated. Or the assumption that patients are unable to follow a conversation or make their own decisions. Perhaps it occurs when a concern is raised, then devalued or dismissed.
Age discrimination is reflected in care strategies that ignore a patient's values and ideas about a productive life. Too often, attitudes like “these patients are old and about to die anyway” or “we can't help them much” predominate.
The effects of age discrimination are not new, but the pandemic has exposed them in shocking ways. In its early days, the virus was dismissed as a concern of particular concern to the elderly, and some argued that if the alternative was to shut down the U.S. economy, it would be dispensable. In the difficult months that followed, many people who died in care were dehumanized in news reports showing body bags stacked outside of facilities. In the end, about 80 percent of those who died from Covid were older adults, including nearly 140,000 nursing home residents – a population plagued by staff shortages, inadequate infection control and neglect.
Older adults trying to stay healthy at home faced challenges of their own: isolation, lack of support from community groups, challenges in accessing medical care through telemedicine, and registration systems for Covid vaccines that were too complicated or confusing.
How can we identify and address age discrimination in healthcare? Judith Graham, Navigating Aging Columnist for Kaiser Health News, will host a panel of experts to offer their advice and insights.
Rani Snyder, Vice President, John A. Hartford Foundation Program, will make introductory remarks.
Panelists include:
Dr. Louise Aronson, Geriatric, Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Elderhood.
Dr. Michael Wassermann, a geriatrician, advocate for older adults at risk from the Covid-19 pandemic, and chairman of the public policy committee for the California Association of Long Term Care Medicine.
Dr. Javette Orgain, a family doctor, medical director for the Illinois Longevity Health Plan serving nursing home residents. Former President of the National Medical Association, which represents African American physicians and their patients, and former Dean of the University of Illinois College of Medicine Urban Health Program.
Dr. Rebecca Elon, a geriatrician and current caregiver of her mother, who has dementia, and her husband, who passed away during the pandemic.
Jess Mauer, an attorney and co-chair of the Maine Council on Aging who advocates an antiaging pledge.
KHN
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health topics. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three most important operating programs of the KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is a non-profit foundation that provides the country with information on health issues. KHN receives grants from the John A. Hartford Foundation, among others, and retains full editorial control over its journalism.
The John A. Hartford Foundation
The John A. Hartford Foundation, based in New York City, is a private, non-partisan, national philanthropy dedicated to improving the care of older adults. The foundation is a leader in aging and health and has three priorities: creating age-appropriate health systems, supporting caregivers, and improving care for serious illnesses and at the end of life.
Event date
10/21/2021 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM ET
Response time
10/21/21
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