Elevate Eldercare

Join the Green House-Pioneer team for the celebratory 200th episode of "Elevate Eldercare."

What started as a pandemic-era project to stay connected with long-term care providers during extended lockdowns has evolved into a platform for voices across the care continuum.

Alex Spanko moderates this conversation with the leaders who have hosted most episodes of the series – Center for Innovation CEO Susan Ryan, CFI chief learning officer Marla DeVries, and CFI chief culture officer Penny Cook. Together, they look back at some of the most powerful conversations from the first 200 episodes, and plot out a vision for the future – both for "Elevate Eldercare" and the ongoing Green House Project-Pioneer Network alliance.

Cheers to 200 episodes and many more!

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26 – including a special session featuring early age-tech startups: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Long-term care is notorious for lagging behind other parts of the health care continuum – including hospitals and doctors' offices – in the adoption of technology. As co-chairs of a Moving Forward Coalition subcommittee on health information technology, Gregory Alexander and Terrence O'Malley are working to change that.

Alexander, the Helen Young alumni professor at Columbia University, and O'Malley – a retired geriatrician and corresponding faculty at Harvard Medical School – joined the podcast to discuss their vision for an LTC landscape where technology actually improves the lives of residents and caregivers.

Listen as they go beyond the popular vision of age technology, like wearables and virtual reality field trips, to a world in which tech supports both better health outcomes and individual elder autonomy.

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26 – including a special session featuring early age-tech startups: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Learn more about the Moving Forward Committee and its various subcommittees, including Alexander and O'Malley's Committee 7: https://movingforwardcoalition.org/committees/

Under Jeannee Parker Martin's leadership, LeadingAge California has achieved some remarkable workforce development numbers, graduating more than 1,000 students from a CNA and home health aide training program – funded by a generous $25 million state grant – in its first year alone.

While not every state has California's budget surplus, dollars are only part of the equation. The California example provides a blueprint for how other states can use a combination of incentives, creative outreach to underrepresented communities, and technology to build up a long-struggling eldercare workforce.

Join Martin for a conversation on the connections between workforce development and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and how providers and advocates across the country can band together to build the care force that elders deserve.

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Watch labor economist Rick Hetrick discuss the demographic drought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w05QgHwq8Ig

Explore LeadingAge California's workforce initiatives: https://www.leadingageca.org/growtheworkforce

In his years marketing major brands like Gillette, Pepsi, and Dannon, Jeff Weiss never encountered any push to pitch products to consumers over the age of 55. Then, once he turned 55 himself, he realized that he didn't feel like a different person just because he crossed an age milestone – he was still himself, with all the same evolving sets of desires, goals, and needs as people younger than 55.

At Age of Majority, the marketing and research firm where he serves as CEO, Weiss seeks to break down the stereotypes that people – and, by extension, companies – hold about older people. Through regular surveys of "active agers" over 55, Weiss reveals that much of what younger people assume about their elders is wrong.

Tune into this week's episode to hear Weiss debunk some preconceived notions about older consumers, and learn how data can help organizations create products and services that real people of all ages actually want to use.

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Learn more about Age of Majority: https://www.ageofmajority.com/

If you're 55 and older, consider joining Revolution55, Age of Majority's market-research community that solicits opinions from older people on a variety of subjects: https://www.ageofmajority.com/revolution55/

When Jack York first started bringing computers into senior living communities in the 1990s, he never could have imagined the ways elders use technology to stay connected with loved ones and their interests today – particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But even back then, when PCs took up entire desks and internet connections required a landline, the goal was the same as it is now: keeping elders in touch with the people and ideas that give them joy and fulfillment.

York joins the podcast to discuss his career in elder-friendly tech, including his current role as founder and chief storyteller at TaleGate – a unique company that brings a mobile video studio to eldercare communities around the country, enabling people to tell their life stories and share their unique perspectives with their loved ones and the world.

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26 – hurry, early bird rates end today, May 31: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Learn more about TaleGate: https://talegate4joy.com/

Check out pictures and stories from TaleGate and Methodist Senior Services' Green House 20th anniversary party in Tupelo, Miss. back in April: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/blog/celebrating-20-years/

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of aging in place – already the overwhelming preference for most people – received more media and political attention than ever before.

But Ryan Frederick believes that the phrase, while well-meaning, is too passive and restrictive, implying that aging is something that happens to people with no agency of their own.

Frederick, the founder and CEO of Here – a consulting firm aimed at helping individuals and organizations adapt to a world with ever-increasing human longevity – joins Susan Ryan to discuss the concept of aging in the right place, and what that means for both eldercare providers and older folks alike.

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26 – hurry, early bird rates end today, May 31: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Explore Here and take a free assessment to determine whether you're living – or aging – in the right place: https://www.here.life/

Read Frederick's book, "Right Place, Right Time": https://www.here.life/right-place-right-time-book

The traditional nursing home took its design and operational cues from hospitals – a setting defined by its focus on physical health over all other considerations.

Since the late 1970s, Planetree International has worked to infuse humanity back into hospitals and, increasingly, health care settings of all kinds. In the beginning, that meant fighting a culture where visitors had strict time limits and patients weren't even allowed to review their own medical files. Today, Planetree's work encompasses all facets of emotional safety – a sense of overall wellbeing that still too often takes a backseat to physical condition and status, illustrated most brutally during COVID-era lockdowns and isolation.

Planetree president Susan Frampton joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss the network of health care providers that have adopted the organization's philosophies for person-directed care, as well as the lessons that long-term care providers can take away from the movement to reform the acute care culture.

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26 – hurry, early bird rates end May 31: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Read more about emotional safety in the British Medical Journal: https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/early/2023/02/02/bmjqs-2022-015573.info

Last year, the groundbreaking NASEM report on nursing home quality laid out a host of recommendations for improving the broken long-term care system in the U.S. While none of those suggestions is necessarily more important than the others, the topic of improving the LTC workforce is probably the one garnering the most attention from providers and policymakers.

This week on the podcast, Dr. Kezia Scales and Dr. Jasmine Travers – the co-chairs of the Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition committee dedicated to finding ways to implement the NASEM report's workforce recommendations – dive into their work with host Penny Cook. Both bring unique and vital perspectives to the Coalition; Scales serves as the senior director of policy research at PHI, an organization dedicated to strengthening the care workforce, while Travers is an assistant professor of nursing at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing.

You'll learn about the federal and state policy levers that the committee is exploring, and how workforce improvement relies on a complex network of factors, from state Medicaid funding to training standards to federal staffing regulations.

Learn more about the Moving Forward Coalition committees and members: https://movingforwardcoalition.org/committees/

Read the Biden administration's fact sheet on reform: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/02/28/fact-sheet-protecting-seniors-and-people-with-disabilities-by-improving-safety-and-quality-of-care-in-the-nations-nursing-homes/

Register for the CFI conference, bringing together the Green House and Pioneer Network communities in Pittsburgh July 23-26 – hurry, early bird rates end May 31: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Eldercare – and U.S. health care writ large – too often is a cold, impersonal experience for the people both giving and receiving care, as ever-increasing demands for efficiency and profit turn an intimate experience into boxes to check and line items on balance sheets.

Dr. Stephen Trzeciak, chief of medicine at Cooper University Health Care and co-author of the book "Compassionomics," seeks to change that with a simple yet bold assertion: Compassion for others in health care isn't just good for people's emotional wellbeing, but also their physical health and the operational strength of providers.

Dr. Trzeciak joins "Elevate Eldercare" ahead of his keynote speaking slot at the first annual Center for Innovation conference, coming to Pittsburgh July 23-26. In conversation with Susan Ryan, he gives an overview of his philosophy and challenges listeners to embrace compassion as the centerpiece of their eldercare practice.

Register for the CFI conference – hurry, early bird rates end May 31: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/2023-conference/

Watch Dr. Trzeciak's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elW69hyPUuI

When the Australia-based ACH Group agreed to become the first provider outside of the United States to fully implement the Green House model, CEO Frank Weits was taking the next step in his organization's 70-year tradition of person-directed care – and building on his own experiences in eldercare, which began as a teenager growing up in the Netherlands.

Weits joins Susan Ryan to discuss his vision for Healthia, the Green House community coming to South Australia later this year, and ACH Group's commitment to "social role valorization" – the idea that the roles we play in life, whether that's as a professional or a charity volunteer or a grandparent or a participant in a hobby, help to provide us meaning and satisfaction.

Both ACH Group and the Center for Innovation built their operational philosophies around the goal of empowering elders to keep playing those roles as they age, maintaining vital connections with the people, communities, and activities that give them meaning. Together, we'll break new ground in Australia!

Learn more about the ACH Group: https://achgroup.org.au/

Read about the ACH-Green House partnership: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/press-releases/australia-expansion/