Elevate Eldercare

As we navigate a holiday season set against the backdrop of global and domestic conflict, this 2021 interview with Dr. Edith Eger feels even more vital than ever. A psychologist and a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Eger has 96 years of direct experience with navigating troubled times – both for herself and in service of others – and her ability to find light in the darkness remains deeply inspiring. Afte...

It's easy to forget that not all nursing home residents are elders – and Vincent Pierce is dedicated to making sure leaders, advocates, and the general public remember. Pierce, a resident of the Coler nursing community on Roosevelt Island in New York City, wears many hats. He's the founder of Nursing Home Lives Matter, an advocacy group formed during the yearlong COVID lockdown that robbed him and...

"Unpretentious" isn't a word you see often in marketing materials for senior living communities, but it shows up several times in the description of Northaven Senior Living in Seattle. Darlene Storti, Northaven's executive director, joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss this down-to-earth assisted and independent living community for lower- and moderate-income elders – as well as the organization's...

Each Thanksgiving, "Elevate Eldercare" centers gratitude by handing the mic over to the people who make Green House homes such great places to live. This year, we're headed out west to Wyoming to meet three team members from Green House Living for Sheridan: licensed practical nurse Kiara Charlson, HR manager and education coordinator Jon Lanning, and Shahbaz Necia Reynolds. Through their stories,...

Stacey Bergmann joined the Center for Innovation this month as the new director of network and community relations – tasked with serving as the main liaison between the national organization and our local-level Green House Project and Pioneer Network partners – and today she joins the podcast to discuss her career, passions, and vision for the future of eldercare. Bergmann, an advanced practice ce...

Brian McGarry ' s research at the University of Rochester has focused on the ways that financial and economic factors affect care in nursing homes — a particularly vital topic as the sector continues to debate a contentious proposed staffing mandate, which could have a significant impact on providers in the years to come. McGarry joins CFI ' s Alex Spanko for a discussion on the ways that incentiv...

For the last three years, many eldercare organizations haven ' t had the ability to truly thrive, with leaders focused squarely on surviving the many challenges facing providers up and down the care continuum. But as we head toward the end of another year, it ' s a good time to take stock and make plans for the year ahead — with an eye toward moving beyond merely surviving and reaching a place whe...

In both the public and policymaker imagination, nursing home reform is strictly a health care issue, the domain of state health departments and the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). But the prevalence of subpar nursing homes — and lack of empowering, person-directed alternatives to an aging long-term care infrastructure — is just as much the result of housing policy as health...

David Simpson is an accomplished musician who ' s been singing since the age of 12, performing alongside music legends like the Staples Singers, Dionne Warwick, and the Drifters. He ' s a visual artist who uses his drawings and paintings to lift others ' spirits and push himself to improve his craft. He ' s a father, a sibling, and heart transplant recipient. And he ' s a resident of the Thome Riv...

The discourse around improving the eldercare landscape tends to focus on narrow, discrete metrics: What's the correct number of nursing home staff hours per day? How can we reduce rehospitalizations? What types of services can be provided in the home most efficiently? Scott Townsley, professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's Erickson School of Aging Studiers and a longtime elderc...

Biophilic design – incorporating nature into the built environment – has grown in popularity in recent years, but the term itself may still seem daunting and strange, especially in an eldercare space where new development of nursing homes is exceedingly rare. Dr. Tuwanda Green, an adjunct instructor at Virginia Tech with more than 30 years of architectural experience, joins the podcast to discuss...

Faced with the workforce issues plaguing the entire eldercare sector, Goodwin Living in Northern Virginia developed a citizenship assistance program for its immigrant employees – simultaneously boosting recruitment and retention while also providing a new social outlet for residents, who help their caregivers prepare for the citizenship exam. Looking for a way to help his mother respond to a diagn...

In 2021, Dr. Samir Sinha was given a potentially daunting job: serving as the technical committee chair for a group tasked with establishing new, national long-term care standards in Canada in the wake of COVID-19's devastation. Dr. Sinha, an internationally renowned geriatrician who serves as the Director of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai and the University Health Network Hospitals in Toronto, joins t...

Building truly age-friendly communities starts with incorporating elders' needs, wants, and goals into civic planning. As the executive director of Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh, Laura Poskin works across the city to build bridges between elders and the decision-makers who can help create accessible, integrated spaces for people of all ages and abilities – all while centering the opinions of old...

This week on the show, we take a break from eldercare policy and best practices with a story of mindfulness and adventure. Previous guest Natalie Yates-Bolton – a senior lecturer in nursing at the University of Salford, Manchester in the United Kingdom – returns with her mother, Myra, for a conversation about their recent pilgrim walk through France. Natalie and Myra recently walked 32 miles along...

The relationship between nurses and certified nursing assistants (CNAs) in nursing homes can often be fraught with hierarchy and disputes over tasks and responsibilities, as well as the normal conflicts that arise in any workplace. To gain some insights into building collaborative care teams, we sat down with two leaders from an organization that's excelled in that department: Presbyterian SeniorC...

The people who work in state long-term care ombudsman's offices are unsung heroes for residents of nursing homes, assisted living communities, and other communal care settings, helping to amplify their voices when they aren't being heard. This week on "Elevate Eldercare," we dive into the present and future of the ombudsman role on both the macro and micro levels. First, former ombudsman Penny Coo...

Within the world of aging services, there's perhaps no more popular concept than "aging in place." But what exactly does that mean, and how can we make that an attainable goal for most people? To help answer that question, we turned to Christine Foster, an interior designer with a specific focus on developing new strategies and models to help elders age in place – whether that's in their own exist...

oe Carella has a bold prescription for the future of eldercare, starting with reimagining nursing homes as hubs for entire communities. Instead of looking for ways to iterate on the institutional nursing home, such as through assisted and independent living, Carella challenges the sector to imagine a future where people actually want to move into a nursing home level of care because that's where t...

Christopher Laxton recently retired after a 40-year career in eldercare, including the last 10 at the helm of AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. He joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss his personal definition of retirement, reframing aging in the United States, and creating a world where eldercare – and health care writ large – is a baseline human right for all people....

When Georgetown University formed its School of Health last year, college officials deliberately left out the word "public" from the name – not as a slight against the profession, as dean Christopher King explains, but to indicate an emphasis on overall population health and wellbeing, not just traditional public-health initiatives like clean water and road safety. King joins the podcast to discus...

While researching ways to improve the end-of-life experience as part of her PhD work, Andrea Grindrod discovered something interesting: People are almost always willing to help others experiencing the death of a loved one, but rarely wanted to ask for that help themselves. So Grindrod – who has personal experience dealing with end-of-life care for both her mother-in-law and husband – developed a s...

As a physician with an MBA and a Silicon Valley programming background, Vipan Nikore has a rare perspective on the world of health technology. Nikore, co-founder and CEO of elder tech company Homecare Hub, joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss the gaps that exist between health care providers and the companies that create health-focused technology – as well as some potential bridges across those di...

Join the Green House-Pioneer team for the celebratory 200th episode of "Elevate Eldercare."   What started as a pandemic-era project to stay connected with long-term care providers during extended lockdowns has evolved into a platform for voices across the care continuum. Alex Spanko moderates this conversation with the leaders who have hosted most episodes of the series – Center for Innovation CE...

Long-term care is notorious for lagging behind other parts of the health care continuum – including hospitals and doctors' offices – in the adoption of technology. As co-chairs of a Moving Forward Coalition subcommittee on health information technology, Gregory Alexander and Terrence O'Malley are working to change that.   Alexander, the Helen Young alumni professor at Columbia University, and O'Ma...