Nearly a third of older adults 31 percent actively pursue goals that are both personally meaningful and contribute to the greater good. While the pursuit of purposeful living is significantly higher among people of color than among whites and Asians, it is found across ethnicities, age, income, health status and geography.
Purposeful living does not crowd out other pleasures or personal goals. In fact, a greater percentage of purposeful respondents than non-purposeful respondents saw later adulthood as a time to do self-oriented activities like traveling or taking classes. People who are purposeful have a positive outlook on life. Purposeful older adults emphasize the joy and satisfaction they experience in their lives, especially in their beyond-the-self engagements.
Freedom is important to purposeful and non-purposeful people in different ways. About half those with purpose emphasized the freedom to be involved in things beyond the self; the non-purposeful mostly looked at freedom as relief from the burdensome responsibilities of paid work and childrearing. What does it all mean? Provide transitional support for volunteers when a program closes or changes its focus. Reach out to newcomers in the community, suggesting volunteering as a way they can get to know their new neighborhood and neighbors.
Connect retired professionals with opportunities to continue using their skills in satisfying ways. Help occasional volunteers make the transition to more substantial involvement when they are ready, often after retirement or other life events. Expand the use of stipends or other compensation, such as transportation reimbursement or meals, especially for roles that require a sustained commitment. Cast a wider net in seeking volunteers.
Done Robblee. For example, chronic conditions and disability influence work and employment decisions for many older and even middle-aged individuals. NIA will continue to:. Support and conduct research on how middle-aged and older adults manage the multiple health-related decisions imposed by increasing longevity.
NIA will support research to better understand the social determinants of health and well-being of older adults, including incentives and supports provided by public and private programs that have an impact on health outcomes. Such research will include the measurement of the economic value of good health.
Age at retirement in the U. Still, most workers today can expect to spend two decades in retirement; some may be retired for three or more decades. The intersection of implications of changes in working life for the health and well-being of older adults during retirement remains an important area of investigation that can inform intervention and policy decisions.
Support and conduct research that models and measures the economic risks of old age with the potential for developing interventions to protect against these risks and adverse health consequences. Demographic and retirement income trends lead to expanding economic risks among older Americans and associated impact on health. Many Americans will require long-term care, but few purchase private insurance to support formal care expenses.
We will support research to understand the behavioral aspects of demand for insurance against these older-age risks as well as alternative models to support efficacious long-term care. Promote the development of data resources to support the development of effective interventions. Measures of time use, experience sampling, and in-home sensor-based technologies also offer potential for new insights for understanding and designing interventions to promote healthy aging.
Research examining the cognitive effects of work and retirement as well as changing environmental defaults to influence health-related aging outcomes have generated findings with enormous practical implications.
Recent evidence also suggests that changes in the economic incentives within the Medicare program increase the use of preventive services. We will support research to better understand the factors in the health care system that support prevention and the successful management of disease.
Through support of research that identifies institutional mechanisms that affect health, NIA will encourage institution-level interventions involving economic, organizational, and systemic interventions to promote better health and reduce health disparities.
Local authorities should review their funding policies to ensure home solutions such as telecare and assistive technology are free to all with substantial need. Creighton and Moore: Making active transport walking, cycling more accessible for older people is important. In the UK, cycling remains a disproportionately young and male mode of transport. In the Netherlands and Germany, for example, it is far more common for older people to cycle.
Improving cycle routes to make them safer is a start. In Scandinavia, planning laws encourage mixed-use development, making journeys from the home to shops and services a lot shorter, and more accessible for older people. This has obvious health benefits, but also can reduce isolation in our older population. Newman: I chair a local medical centre patient participation group and we have a number of older members who are using their skills in the workplace.
However, working in later life needs to acknowledge our need for flexibility especially when our staying power might be reduced. Job sharing and part-time work can be ideal for us. Jonathan Morgan, senior service manager, Red Cross independent living services in London: There are a number of opportunities to increase work opportunities for older people, someone mentioned previously that the third sector has notoriously low numbers of older people as employees despite having the most experience of advocating for them as a group.
Tinker: There is evidence of age discrimination in the workplace as the recent government report A new vision for older workers: retain, retrain recruit shows. Interestingly more older people are becoming self employed. How can older people play a bigger role in society?
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