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"Greenfield, Emily"
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Rachel is a generous and loyal pal to her engaged best friend Darcy. But after celebrating her 30th birthday, perpetual good girl Rachel unexpectedly ends up in the arms of Dex, the guy she's had a crush on since law school, and who happens to be Darcy's fiancé. In the frantic weeks leading up to Darcy's wedding, Rachel finds herself caught between her longtime friendship with Darcy and the prospect of losing the love of her life.
DVD
Age‐Friendly Initiatives, Social Inequalities, and Spatial Justice
Discourse on communities and aging traditionally has focused on the availability, accessibility, and quality of local services to support older adults in need of assistance. More recently, however, a growing worldwide “age‐friendly” movement has pushed the conceptualization of community supports for an aging society beyond service provision. The term “age friendly” is used in considering how various aspects of a community facilitate or impede the health and well‐being of individuals as they experience long lives. Frameworks on age friendliness include attention to health and community services for older adults but also encompass other aspects of communities, such as the physical design of outdoor spaces and buildings, the diversity of mobility options for drivers and nondrivers alike, and the availability of safe, affordable, and various types of housing. Age‐friendly frameworks also highlight how the very social fabric of a community can influence older residents’ quality of life. Over the past decade, a growing number of cities and communities have launched age‐friendly initiatives as organized and comprehensive efforts to make localities better for residents as they age. This essay begins to explore how AFIs can address social inequalities in health and aging. It concludes by describing how embedding a spatial justice lens within age‐friendly efforts could help AFIs realize more fully the changes that they seek to create at the local, national, and global levels.
Journal Article
Characterising older adults’ engagement in age-friendly community initiatives: perspectives from core group leaders in the Northeast United States of America
Researchers and programme champions alike have identified older adults as key contributors to age-friendly community change efforts. There has been very little scholarship, however, to characterise the nature of older adults’ engagement in age-friendly community initiatives (AFCIs). To help address this gap, we drew on five waves of data from semi-structured interviews with core group members of eight AFCIs in a Northeast region of the United States of America. Interviews were conducted as part of a multi-year, community-engaged study on the development of philanthropically supported AFCIs. We iteratively coded segments of the interviews in which core group members described the involvement of older adults, as well as their efforts to engage older adults in the initiatives. This analysis resulted in an inductive-analytic typology with five qualitatively distinct categories, including older adults as: (a) consumers (receiving information, goods and services through the AFCI), (b) informants (sharing perspectives on ageing in the community with the core group), (c) task assistants (assisting with project-oriented tasks under the direction of the core group), (d) champions (contributing ideas and implementing action on their own initiative), and (e) core group members (holding primary responsibility for driving the work of the AFCI forward). We discuss implications of the typology for research on AFCI implementation and evaluation, as well as opportunities for AFCIs to enhance the engagement of older adults from historically marginalised groups.
Journal Article
Principles and Approaches for Unifying an Age-Friendly Movement
Age-friendly initiatives dispersed across sectors have the potential to coalesce into a broader movement. This article describes the concept of social movements and its relevance for bringing together efforts as part of an age-friendly ecosystem (AFE). It presents five shared principles
and approaches for further unifying age-friendly efforts: a focus on policy, systems, and environmental change; leveraging relationships for change; positioning older adults as change agents; addressing ageism; and attending to aging equity and diversity. We discuss how these principles and
approaches can foster opportunities for more strategic alignment to strengthen an age-friendly movement for the 21st century and beyond.
Journal Article
School Context in Adolescence and Cognitive Functioning 50 Years Later
To advance understanding of how social inequalities from childhood might contribute to cognitive aging, we examined the extent to which school context in adolescence was associated with individuals’ cognitive performance more than 50 years later. Using data from 3,012 participants in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), we created an aggregate measure of school-level structural advantage, with indicators such as the proportion of teachers who had at least five years of teaching experience and spending per pupil. Multilevel models indicated that secondary school advantage was associated with small benefits in language/executive function at age 65 among older adults who had lower academic achievement in secondary school. Findings suggest that school advantage is a developmental context of adolescence that has modest implications for intracohort differences in aspects of later life cognition.
Journal Article
Childhood Abuse as a Risk Factor for Sleep Problems in Adulthood: Evidence from a U.S. National Study
Background
Accumulating evidence indicates that stress impairs sleep quality. Few studies, however, have examined the extent to which early life stress can jeopardize sleep in adulthood.
Purpose
Guided by a life course epidemiological perspective on health, this study examined associations between childhood abuse and adult sleep problems.
Methods
We used data from 835 respondents in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS). Self-report measures assessed the frequency of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in childhood, as well as global and component indicators of sleep problems in adulthood.
Results
Having experienced all three types of childhood abuse—even infrequently—was associated with global sleep pathology, as well as specific types of sleep problems. Reports of both frequent physical and frequent emotional abuse—even in the absence of sexual abuse—were also associated with poor sleep.
Conclusions
Childhood abuse is a risk factor for individuals’ long-term sleep problems.
Journal Article
Variation in Implementing Dementia-Friendly Community Initiatives: Advancing Theory for Social Change
Dementia-friendly communities (DFC) have emerged as a global movement to make communities more supportive and inclusive of people living with dementia (PLWD) and their care partners. This study contributes to a nascent body of research on DFC initiatives by building theory on their local implementation. Based on an analysis of data from semi-structured interviews with 23 leaders of initiatives in Massachusetts (United States), we aimed to identify key dimensions of variation in the implementation of DFC initiatives. We found that all initiatives engaged in a common set of activities, such as the facilitation of training about dementia and improving services for PLWD. Although initiatives mostly engaged in these activities in ways that targeted the community at large, in some instances, they concentrated their efforts on enhancing the dementia-friendliness of their own organizations. We describe ways in which financial, social, and human capital operate as key factors that influence the initiatives’ primary focus (i.e., the community at large or their own organization). Our findings suggest the importance of helping DFC initiative leaders more explicitly specify the focal ecological level of their efforts throughout the trajectory of their work, especially in the context of resource considerations. Results also indicate ways in which DFC initiative efforts at one systems level can support those at other levels over time.
Journal Article
Municipal Ethnic Composition and Disparities in COVID-19 Infections in New Jersey: A Blinder–Oaxaca Decomposition Analysis
COVID-19 has disproportionally impacted Latinx and Black communities in the US. Our study aimed to extend the understanding of ethnic disparities in COVID-19 case rates by using a unique dataset of municipal case rates across New Jersey (NJ) during the first 17 months of the pandemic. We examined the extent to which there were municipal-level ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection rates during three distinct spikes in case rates over this period. Furthermore, we used the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition analysis to identify municipal-level exposure and vulnerability factors that contributed to ethnic disparities and how the contributions of these factors changed across the three initial waves of infection. Two clear results emerged. First, in NJ, the COVID-19 infection risk disproportionally affected Latinx communities across all three waves during the first 17 months of the pandemic. Second, the exposure and vulnerability factors that most strongly contributed to higher rates of infection in Latinx and Black communities changed over time as the virus, alongside medical and societal responses to it, also changed. These findings suggest that understanding and addressing ethnicity-based COVID-19 disparities will require sustained attention to the systemic and structural factors that disproportionately place historically marginalized ethnic communities at greater risk of contracting COVID-19.
Journal Article
Participation in community activities through Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) Supportive Service Programs
Naturally Occurring Retirement Community Supportive Service Programs (NORC Programs) constitute a national model in the United States of America that aims to benefit older adults ageing in place in their own homes and communities. One central aspect of NORC Programs is the provision of community activities to facilitate older adults’ connections with others. Guided by ecological systems theory, we explored from older adults’ perspectives what influences their participation in the community activities offered by NORC Programs, as well as the meaning of the social contact that such participation affords. We used data from an in-depth interview study with 41 older residents across seven NORC Program sites in the greater New York City area. Themes regarding influences on participation included individual circumstances (personal desire for social activity and health status), programmatic factors (relationships with staff and appeal of the activities) and community contexts (appeal of the other attendees). Perceptions of other attendees also emerged as an influence on the social effects of participation, which ranged from experiencing social contact alone to creating independent friendships. Overall, findings indicate that programme features combine with individual and community contexts to influence diverse experiences of community activities. In addition to implications for organisational practice, we interpret the results in terms of directions for future research regarding how community-based organisations can influence social integration in later life.
Journal Article
Participatory Research Approaches in Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias Literature: A Scoping Review
Abstract
Background and Objectives
Given the increase in methodological pluralism in research on brain health, cognitive aging, and neurodegenerative diseases, this scoping review aims to provide a descriptive overview and qualitative content analysis of studies stating the use of participatory research approaches within Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) literature globally.
Research Design and Methods
We conducted a systematic search across four multidisciplinary databases (CINAHL, SCOPUS, PsycInfo, PubMed) for peer-reviewed, English-language studies addressing ADRD that explicitly described their use of a participatory research approach. We employed a systematic process for selecting articles that yielded a final sample of 163 studies. Data from articles were analyzed to chart trends from 1990 to 2022 in terminology, descriptions, application of participatory approaches, and the extent and nature of partnerships with nonacademics.
Results
Results demonstrated geographic differences in the use of stated approaches between North America—where community-based participatory research predominates—and Europe, where Action Research is most common. We further found that only 73% of papers in this systematic review had identifiable definitions or descriptions of the participatory approach used. Findings also showed that 14% of articles demonstrated no evidence of engaged partnership beyond activities typical of research participants, while 23% of articles identified partnering with people with dementia, and an additional 16% reported partnerships with members from Indigenous, Black, Asian, or Latinx communities.
Discussion and Implications
This scoping review identifies three areas in need of greater attention in ADRD literature using participatory research approaches. First, findings indicate the importance of strengthening the use, transparency, and rigor of participatory methods. Second, results suggest the need for greater inclusion of historically marginalized groups who are most affected by ADRD as research partners. Finally, the findings highlight the need for integrating social justice values of participatory approaches into research project designs.
Journal Article