How the 'Old Old' Can Have Best Lives  July 23, 2009 RSS Feed
Print   • Comment (5)  Americans 65 and older are projected to
grow from 13 percent to 20 percent of the nation's population by
2050, when one in four older people will be 85 years of age or
older. That's 5 percent of the entire country -- one in 20
people. That's the Age Wave getting ready to wash over us. Yet
surprisingly little attention is being focused on the "old old."
How are we going to take care of them? The ranks of geriatric
medicine have been thinning, not growing. How are our
communities going to accommodate and treat them? And, most
important to older people, what does a high quality of life look
like at that age and how can they attain it?  [See Growing
Older, Getting Mellower, Feeling Good.]  The period of life that
precedes death for most people is characterized by several years
of increasing frailty. Viewed as a separate and predictable late
stage of life, are there ways frailty can be a positive life
experience? In an academic-jo