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Working in partnership with 10 organizations, Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) inaugurated the nation’s first National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, a technical assistance resource center dedicated to improving the quality of services and supports for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults nationwide.

Curricula and Training

PHI was invited to become a partner in this ground-breaking initiative because of its expertise in curricula development and person-centered care training.

PHI will collaborate with SAGE and the other project partners to develop the Resource Center’s training curricula for both aging network providers and LGBT service providers.

PHI staff will also conduct train-the-trainer sessions with the Center’s core training partners and pilot testing to evaluate the effectiveness of the training curricula.

Serving the LGBT Elder Community

“Like most older adults, LGBT elders need services and supports to help them age successfully, but too often they don’t seek them from the aging service network due to fear of discrimination,” said PHI Organizational Culture Change Specialist Kate Waldo, who is working with the Resource Center and coordinating the project partners. “Yet, organizations that traditionally serve the LGBT community are often not ‘age-friendly,’ lacking the knowledge and skills necessary to serve elders.”

“PHI is addressing these profound gaps by developing curricula and providing person-directed care training that honor the whole person and celebrate diversity,” Waldo continued.

“It is critical that the aging network acknowledges that LGBT consumers are accessing their services. If it doesn’t, you are in effect making the LGBT community an invisible population that feels they have to hide an important aspect of their self-identity in order to feel safe — or go without needed services altogether,” Waldo said.

‘An Enormous Step Forward’

A key component of the new Center is its website that over time will provide LGBT elders and their loved ones with information on legal issues, caregiving, lifelong planning and housing, and other concerns.

“The launch of our National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is an enormous step forward for our aging lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities,” said Michael Adams, executive director at SAGE. “It speaks to the necessary attention that service providers of all types must place on supporting diverse older adults around the country.”

SAGE, the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults, launched the new Center in mid-October with a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Aging.

More information about the Resource Center and suggestions for further reading are available at PHI’s Training and Organizational Development Services blog.

– by Deane Beebe

Robert N. Butler, M.D., the internationally renowned “father of gerontology,” died on Sunday at the age of 83.

By rejecting the idea that older people have nothing to contribute to society — a widespread prejudice he dubbed “ageism” — Dr. Butler is credited with changing the way Americans think about aging and the elderly.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Why Survive? Being Old in America, Dr. Butler spoke out against the undignified conditions in which elderly Americans are commonly expected to live.

Lifelong Commitment to Aging

Dr. Butler was a pioneer in the field of gerontology. He was the first director of the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, and was instrumental in its creation in 1975.

Dr. Butler founded the nation’s first department of geriatrics, at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical School in 1982.

He founded the International Longevity Center (ILC) in 1990, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Americans “on how to live longer and better, and…how to maximize the benefits of today’s age boom,” according to its website.

One of the ILC’s projects, the Caregiving Project for Older Americans, aimed to improve the quality of caregiving in the U.S. by providing training grants and helping to develop a systemic approach to the recruitment and retention of caregivers.

“Dr. Butler understood the link between quality of caregiving and the quality of life for elders,” said PHI national policy director Steve Edelstein, who worked with Butler at the ILC in the late 90′s. “His work truly embraced the ‘quality care through quality jobs’ framework.”

Personal Experiences Informed Life’s Work

Dr. Butler often said that he learned just how strong and successful older Americans could be simply by observing his grandparents, who raised him. He took this idea of “productive aging” to heart, continuing to work until his death from leukemia.

His final book, The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life, was published just weeks before he died.

Widespread Recognition

Dr. Butler’s contribution to the field of aging is vast. He wrote hundreds of articles on the subject, as well as numerous books, several of which were co-written with his late wife, Myrna Lewis, Ph.D. Dr. Lewis died in 2005.

Dr. Butler’s death was widely noted in mainstream publications, from the New York Times to the Washington Post.

In a statement, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote that Dr. Butler helped “to transform a culture that too often acted as if people’s contributions to society ended on their 65th birthday.”

– by Matthew Ozga

PHI New York Policy Director Carol Rodat

The Allegany County Community Partnership on Aging joined with Alfred University and Alfred State College to mount its Sixth Annual Conference on Aging, entitled “Dynamic Aging.” Read the full story

January 3, 2009 front page

A Jan. 3  Boston Globe editorial titled “Bracing for the Age Wave” urges President-elect Obama not to procrastinate in developing policies to address America’s aging population.

“The  Obama’s administration will have to starkly change the way the nation provides healthcare and housing for its elderly if the ‘gray tsunami’ of the boomers is not to overwhelm the medical system and swamp state and federal budgets with red ink,” said the Globe.

The piece also highlights the Institute of Medicine report released last April, a report that calls for concrete improvements in the quality of direct-care jobs including:

• More, and more effective, education and training;
• Increased wages and benefits; and
• Improvements to the work environment, such as empowerment strategies and culture change.

Read the full story