Can a Robot Offer Care and Companionship as We Age?
(Editor’s Note: This story previously appeared on PBS NewsHour.) Judy Woodruff: A Northern Virginia startup company is using new technology, and a sense of humor, to care for the elderly. The...
View ArticleShould You Adopt an 80-Year-Old?
Everyone of a certain age remembers Sally Struthers’ Save the Children TV commercials, encouraging viewers to improve the life of an impoverished child in a developing nation by sponsoring him or her...
View ArticlePickleball, Anyone?
Three years ago, Oro Valley, Ariz. resident Sherry Circle felt completely isolated from the world. She was diabetic and weighed more than 300 pounds. “I was an athlete in high school,” explains...
View ArticleTake a Walk on the Mall Side
Mall stores are shuttering, and David Brown is shuddering to think what mall walkers can do when the malls close, too. By title, Brown is a behavioral scientist with the federal Centers for Disease...
View ArticleA Little Culture is Good for Your Mental Health
Eve Hammond, 76, a retired scientist in the Bay Area, has a steady diet of museum and gallery shows, plays and/or concerts each month. She has also taken craft classes, from jewelry-making and pottery...
View ArticleResolve to Alleviate Your Fears in the New Year
When you were young, New Year’s resolutions may have been about dieting, finding a new job or traveling more. But now, as you deal with the vast emotional landscape faced by every aging boomer and Gen...
View ArticleWhat You Do to Reduce Loneliness
(Editor’s Note: This is part of our Loneliness + Isolation series brought to you by Consumer Cellular.) Various surveys of older Americans have found that between 33% and 43% of them are lonely. But we...
View ArticleThe Therapeutic Power of Making Art
Like most Americans, I’ve been feeling empty, numb, shell-shocked and dumbfounded by the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve been socially isolating as directed, except for daily walks. I am used to working from...
View ArticleWhy the Former Surgeon General Worries About Loneliness and Older Adults
While traveling across America during the final two years of the Obama administration, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy discovered many people were experiencing something he struggled with as a child:...
View ArticleA Pandemic Lockdown Just for Older People? No!
An idea is gaining traction among some economists and scholars to deal with the pandemic in America: Isolate and lockdown older Americans, possibly until there is a vaccine. Everyone else gets to go...
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