AARP Members in Maryland Put Health Care as Top Priority

On Feb. 15 in Baltimore, AARP’s Maryland members which represent half of Maryland’s 50 and older population have ranked ensuring the availability, cost and quality of health care as the top legislative priority for the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

This survey is a representation of what the older adult population care deeply about.

According to the survey the second most important concern in older adults is making prescription drugs more affordable. Furthermore, protection pensions and retiree health benefits, maintaining access to home and community based long-term care and expanding health insurance coverage, Medicaid and funding for home modifications were all issues that received more then 60 percent of the vote.

The question asked to AARP members was “How much of a priority should it be for AARP to work on the following legislative issues in Maryland?"

In 2005, AARP Maryland Branch has supported numerous bills such as ones that address property tax credits, increase the number of participants and funding for the management of the Older Adults Wavier, and broaden the assistance offer to lower income older adult’s participant in the Senior Prescription Drug Assistance Program.
This survey was conducted from October 2005 to November 2005 by AARP’s Knowledge Management division.

For more results and further information of this survey go to http://www.aarp.org/md

Source: “AARP Members Put Health Care at Top of Legislative Issue List; Survey Reflecting Views of 800,000, 50+ Marylanders Released,” Yahoo News, Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Home

Gyms are Inaccessible to the Disabled

Health Clubs are one of the few public places in the United States that do not abide to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

For example, most health clubs lack the ramps and wide doors that they are required to provide. But even when health clubs have such basic accommodations the exercise equipment must be accessible, too.

Disabled exercisers face major hurdles at most gyms, according to a survey in November in The American Journal of Public Health, which looked at 16 for-profit and 19 nonprofit health clubs and concluded that all had significant problems. Some had obstacles that prevented disabled members from reaching parts of the club, a violation of the disabilities act. Others lacked equipment that could be used by people with disabilities or staff members who were willing to help such members.

New federal guidelines for enforcing the 1990 disabilities act, now under review by the Department of Justice, would mandate that health clubs provide a clear floor space of at least 30 inches by 48 inches around each type of weight-training equipment so people in wheelchairs can get to them. Swimming pools, depending on their size, would be required to have a ramp or a lift capable of lowering swimmers in their wheelchairs.
Only 36 percent of Americans with disabilities engage in any leisure-time physical activity, like gardening or walking, compared with 56 percent of the general population, according to Healthy People 2010, a report by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services.

No chain of gyms does a lot to accommodate the disabled, but there are making small efforts such as Crunch, New York Sports Club and 24 Hour Fitness say they welcome guide dogs and allow aides in for free. Many branches of Bally Total Fitness have arm cycles, which let members break a sweat without using their legs, and machines with removable seats.

Other clubs adjust their machines to suit individual disabled members' needs. For instance, the owners of a Liberty Fitness franchise in Riverside, Calif., equipped a set of weight machines with a blinking green light for a deaf member who couldn't hear the timed beeps that announced when it was time to change machines.

Mr. Grobbel's gym is one of the few where sinks and lockers are positioned at wheelchair height. The aisles between equipment are wide and all machines have removable seats. All of the gym's personal trainers are certified in adaptive fitness, a specialized credential for those who work with disabled exercisers, even though only about 75 of the club's 1,500 members have disabilities.

In May, Cybex International introduced a line of disabled-friendly machines, and the company says it has sold hundreds of models, mostly to universities. The line includes seven pieces of cardio fitness equipment with bright yellow pedals, straps and handgrips that are easier for people with poor sight to see, as well as raised icons on control buttons for the blind. Strength-training machines have swing-away seats and long, low grips reachable from a wheelchair. (Each piece costs about $200 more than standard equipment.)

Home

Aging at Home: For a Lucky Few, a Wish Come True

Dr. Jon Pynoos, professor at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, was featured in a recent New York Times article entitled, "Aging at Home: For a Lucky Few, a Wish Come True." The story, which ran on Thursday, February 9, 2006, examined the brief history of the Beacon Hill Village, a nonprofit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts that was created by and for local residents determined to grow old in familiar surroundings.

Beacon Hill Village originated five years ago as the brainchild of a dozen civic-minded residents of the rustic 19th-century neighborhood. They wished to remain at their homes and independent from adult children when everyday activities such as household chores and transportation became too difficult.

The organization, which has benefited from advocates at the nearby Harvard Business School and other grants from wealthy members, now has 340 members ages 52 to 98, and an annual budget of $300,000. The yearly fee for members is $550 for an individual and $780 for a household, plus the additional cost of other services. But the question remains, writes author Jane Gross, whether or not similar, residential based, assisted living communities could flourish in lower income neighborhoods.

Leonard Davis School of Gerontology professor Jon Pynoos asserts that funding may be available for elderly communities in other, less affluent, areas through federal and state pilot programs that support seniors at home. He points to the United States Administration on Aging, which is currently paying for service coordinators at 60 "naturally occurring retirement communities," or NORCÕs. Even state Medicaid programs are giving vouchers to help purchase home care services, the article states, when Medicaid has historically been limited to nursing homes.

Source (and full story): http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/garden/09care.html

Home

Technology creates a safer bathroom

Courtesy of MSNBC

The bathroom is likely the last room of the house to embrace the digital world — even though in many homes the bathroom is turning into something closer to spa than water closet. As this room becomes a place for refuge and relaxation, the possibilities for digital improvement multiply. Here’s a quick look at what’s available now, and a few interesting new twists on the near horizon.

Let’s start with a basic: the faucet. The touchless infrared-actuated faucets that are increasingly common in public restrooms are now beginning to show up in the home. Besides convenience, the makers tout these for preventing the spread of germs as well as water conservation.

Smarthome.com features two versions of Autoluxe automatic faucets — one with adjustable water temperature, and another (for the kids’ bathroom) where the temperature is preset. Prices range from $329 to $439 and both install just the same way as a conventional faucet. They're battery powered (with an estimated year between changes) so no wiring is needed, although an AC adapter is also available. (If you want to be truly touchless, add the $24 Lentek automatic soap dispenser, also activated by a sensor that detects the presence of your outstretched hands.)

Brizo, the upscale brand from Delta Faucets, will soon up the ante. At the Consumer Electronics Show last month they introduced the Pascal kitchen faucet, which provides touch control as well as the hands-free infrared mode; a similar faucet for bathrooms is on the drawing board, complete with digital temperature readout. And Brizo also demonstrated a prototype remote-control shower: you can start the shower from anywhere in the home. The remote displays the current water temperature and gives a beep when the shower reaches a pre-set temperature.

A Silicon Valley firm called Health Hero Networks is introducing, through doctors and hospitals, a line of health monitors for home use that act something like a visiting nurse, to track specific conditions like diabetes, asthma or heart trouble. 

Connected via the Internet, the devices have small LCD screens that ask questions — “How are you feeling today?” — and then prompt the patient through whatever testing procedure is appropriate, such as taking blood sugar or testing lung function. The device asks more questions about how the patient is feeling and then sends on the results of the “visit” to the doctor for follow up. In a nation filled with aging boomers entering the Bermuda Triangle of health, the home health monitor may someday be the next must-have gadget. Maybe even bigger than the shower radio.

Source (and full story): http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11104314/

Home