Question

In the United States we have seen great progress in extending quantity/years to our lives. Longer life may present greater opportunities for such things as increased time with family, more time to pursue hobbies or other activities, such as volunteerism or community activism, than was experienced by previous generations. However, the degree to which aging adults can experience these opportunities is often reduced due to health factors or disabilities. Many of these health and disability factors are the result of lifestyle, and not necessarily due solely to “aging”. Among the health threats are diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, falls, and Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and other mental health issues.

Thus, we have achieved great strides in lengthening our average years of life, but we lag behind in facilitating quality for those extended years. In other words, we have people living “longer”, but not necessarily living “better”. This scenario will have a major impact on our health care and human services systems in the U.S., especially as the Baby Boomers continue to enter their elder years. There are significant concerns that our systems are not equipped to respond to the needs of this population.

In a post of a minimum of 175 words, discuss your thoughts on this scenario.

What evidence can you point to regarding the health and human services needs of this population and the ability of our health care and human services systems to meet them?

Identify some of those health and social service needs and the barriers that elder individuals may face as they age.

End your post with a statement about what you worry about in terms of your own aging.

Answer 1

United States has been committed to a national goal for sustainable development in all the field including healthcare. Part of this goal is that people of all ages get the health and social care they need but health system around the country are not yet ready regarding the health and human services needs of older population. Older people often experiences more than one health conditions at the same time and these problems tend to be ongoing. Yet health system are usually designed to detect and treat individual diseases and conditions. As a result they tend to manage older people's health issues in fragmented ways which have negative consequences. For example older people often struggle with conflicting advice from different health providers. They may be prescribed many drug that can have negative interactions.They might also pay higher cost for all the different services. Frequently this fragmentation means that we miss oppurtunities to manage chronic conditions and prevent people becoming care dependent. However, we know the ability of our health care and human services systems to meet them. Health system need to shift from managing each disease or condition seperately and take a more holistic and integrated approach focused on building and maintaining older people's physical and mental capacity. A need and assessment of integrated health service is required to determine the goal, capacity and the physical and social environment of older people. This assessment enables health and human service professionals together with the older person and their care giver to develop a care plan where services are coordinated accross different providers and settings and delivered in the older person's home or as near as possible. This idea will ensure qualty health services and better use of existing health resources and older generation will not be left behind.

As we know that we are in the middle of a giant societal change and in the next three decades, there are going to be more number of older people than ever before in the history. We should be proud that we added 30 years to human life expentancy which was inconceivable previously but what we have not done is taking this immense success and turn it into a victory for everybody. The world is changing, life is short and fast. Let us suppose that our healthcare system starts providing integrated health service successfully in the next two-three decades but my concern still remains that would it be able to manage such a big "gray tsunami" of older people?