Adult Day Care and Growth in the Age Wave (Can We Call Adult Day Care Something Else?)
Jeff Opdyke of the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article today on the growth of adult day care in the United States.(We have to change that name. Yes, it provides care, but my mind goes to child care, and this isn’t child care. We can (have to) do better. Some Ecumen communities call it Adult Day Services …any other names come to mind?)Some interesting stats from the National Adult Day Services Association: - Demand is growing up to 15% per year. (You can count on that growing a heck of a lot more with more two-income earning baby boomer families who fall in that sandwich generation).- At least 400,000 people are served nationally in adult day services.- The average national cost is $61 a day. A home health aide in comparison runs $152 per day.
Four Healthy Aging Steps = 14 More Years
We hear all the time about changing our behaviors and habits to help us live longer, healthier lives. Now there’s some data reported by Reuters yesterday that actually quantifies how many years you might expect to get from a combination of activities. (Read and add resolutions for healthy aging and successful aging here).People who drink moderately, exercise, quit smoking and eat five servings of fruit and vegetables daily live on average 14 years longer than people who adopt none of these behaviors. We’ve heard for years that these actions will help us live longer, but this study actually quantifies their collective impact. Between 1993 and 1997 the researchers questioned 20,000 healthy British men and women about their lifestyles. They also tested every participant’s blood to measure vitamin C intake, an indicator of how much fruit and vegetables people ate.Then they assigned the participants -- aged 45-79 -- a score of between 0 and 4, giving one point for each of the healthy behaviors.After allowing for age and other factors that could affect the likelihood of dying, the researchers determined that people with a score of 0 were 4-times as likely to have died, particularly from cardiovascular disease.The researchers, who tracked deaths among the participants until 2006, also said a person with a health score of 0 had the same risk of dying as someone with a health score of 4 who was 14 years older.The lifestyle change with the biggest benefit was giving up smoking, which led to an 80 percent improvement in health, the study found. This was followed by eating fruits and vegetables.Moderate drinking and keeping active brought the same benefits, Kay-Tee Khaw and colleagues at the University of Cambridge and the Medical Research Council said.'Armed with this information, public-health officials should now be in a better position to encourage behavior changes likely to improve the health of middle-aged and older people,' the researchers wrote.