Research and Related Content

Research

• Understanding Elderspeak: An Evolutionary Concept Analysis (Innovation in Aging, 2021, Volume 5, Issue 3) Well-intentioned health care professionals caring for older adults often engage in what’s known as “elderspeak”—a simplified speech register used with older adults which sounds like baby talk. This study concludes: “Communication is a crucial component of person-centered care to older adults, and care providers must thus be aware that their implicit biases may inadvertently lead to patronizing communication patterns, such as elderspeak.”
• Ageism Amplifies Cost and Prevalence of Health Conditions (The Gerontologist, 2020, Vol. 60, No. 1) This is the first study to identify the economic cost that ageism imposes on health. The findings suggest that a reduction of ageism would not only have a monetary benefit for society, but also have a health benefit for older persons.
• Positive Age Beliefs Protect Against Dementia Even Among Elders with High-Risk Gene (PLOS ONE, 2018, Vol. 13, No. 2) This study examined for the first time whether positive age beliefs that are acquired from the culture may reduce the risk of developing dementia among older individuals, including those who are APOE ε4 carriers. The results suggest that positive age beliefs, which are modifiable and have been found to reduce stress, can act as a protective factor, even for older individuals at high risk of dementia.
• ​Interventions to Reduce Ageism against Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (American Journal of Public Health, Aug 2019, Vol. 109, No.8)​ This meta-analysis finds that interventions are associated with substantial reduction in ageism​; the authors recommend that intergenerational interventions should be part of an international strategy to improve perceptions of older people and the aging process​.
• Reframing Aging: Effect of a Short-Term Framing Intervention on Implicit Measures of Age Bias (2019): This article appearing in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B describes the effect of a reframing aging intervention on implicit age bias.
• Finding the Frame: An Empirical Approach to Reframing Aging and Ageism (2017): This report explains the process and research behind the development of the evidence-based reframing aging narratives shown to improve attitudes toward aging and to boost understanding of the structural and systemic changes needed to capture the longevity dividend.
• Frame Brief: Framing Strategies to Advance Aging and Address Ageism as Policy Issues (2017): This summary offers a brief, lively guide to an evidence-based approach to reframing aging.
• The Pernicious Problem of Ageism (2015): This special issue of Generations, the journal of the American Society on Aging, explores the pressing issue of ageism in America and the importance of using reframing to address ageism.
• Gauging Aging: Mapping the Gaps Between Expert and Public Understandings of Aging in America (2015): This report compares the public’s perception of aging with that of aging experts and discusses how this disconnect presents problems for building broad support for policies and programs that promote the well-being of older adults.
• Aging, Agency, and Attribution of Responsibility: Shifting Public Discourse about Older Adults (2015): This analysis identifies six narratives that currently dominate the conversation in the media and in advocacy organizations and points to promising opportunities for reframing public discourse.

Related Content

• When it Comes to Images, Let's Not Crop Frail Older Adults Out of the Frame by Nancy E. Lundebjerg, American Geriatrics Society, on the importance of representing the diversity of older people in images and celebrating the ways that assistive devices allow us to continue to participate and contribute. 
• Free-to-Use 'Age-Positive’ Icons Launched to Replace Stereotypical Symbols of Ageing From the Centre for Ageing Better
• When It Comes to Older Adults, Language Matters: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Adopts Modified American Medical Association Style: This article explains how the American Geriatrics Society, one of the LAO collaborators on the reframing aging project, promotes modifications in language to its journal authors.
• NIH Inclusion Across the Lifespan: This editorial by Marie A. Bernard, MD, deputy director of the National Institute on Aging, discusses the National Institutes of Health's policy for including people of all ages in its clinical trials.
• AGS Report on Engagement Related to the NIH Inclusion Across the Lifespan Policy:This report describes how various principles of reframing aging were applied to the inclusion discussion.
• A Powerful New Tool to Combat Ageism: John Feather, the CEO of Grantmakers in Aging, authored this blog for The Huffington Post about the new research.