San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/aging/)
Community organizations say the systems in Chinatown to protect older populations during extreme weather are not enough to meet the needs that could arise. Without sufficient financial backing, the health of many older residents in the neighborhood could be threatened during extreme weather disasters. Similar scenarios could transpire in San Francisco’s other climate-vulnerable areas.
Administrators are overhauling policies and procedures to regain federal funding that is set to expire following the issuance of multiple damning inspection reports at Laguna Honda Hospital. They have until Sept. 13 to implement changes, which include a requirement to transfer or discharge all patients, before they can apply for recertification from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Aging is often obscured from movies, or portrayed in ways that perpetuate stereotypes about what aging is. The films at the Legacy Film Festival on Aging counter that by exploring more fully what it means to get older.
On the sidewalk in front of the San Francisco Department of Public Health on Thursday morning, a dozen or so activists stood holding yellow signs reading “Isolation kills, too!” Julie Schneider, the field service coordinator for the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, was one of these advocates for residents of facilities like nursing homes, who have been calling for in-person visitation in long-term care to resume promptly. “Civic” spoke with Schneider and volunteer ombudsman Richard Correia at the demonstration. “If you spend enough time around people that are in the end stages of their life, there are things that keep them going. And then there are times when, you know, they lose the will,” Correia said. One of those things is seeing loved ones, he said.
Self-Help for the Elderly, has stepped in not just with advocacy for improved access to vaccines, but by bringing doctors who can administer vaccines to the seniors who need them at community centers they already visit. President and CEO Anni Chung joined “Civic” to share how the organization has been vaccinating the seniors it serves.
Vaccines are arriving in California and doses will be administered at nursing homes soon through a government partnership with pharmacy giants CVS and Walgreens, whose staffs will deliver vaccines to long term care facilities. Eric Dowdy, chief government affairs officer at Leading Age California, an organization representing mostly nonprofit senior care facilities, said the top priority for those planning the vaccine rollout is combating misinformation that fuels mistrust in the vaccine.
The coronavirus pandemic has transformed elections, and for people who live in residential care facilities like nursing homes, that may be creating barriers to participation. Last week, organizers with Senior and Disability Action called together advocates and experts to lay out what rights these residents have and how to ensure they are able to exercise them.
In his memoir “Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of my Stroke,” writer and journalist David Talbot reflects on the long journey toward recovery from a stroke that attacked his ability to swallow, care for himself and speak and write.
Fear, uncertainty and isolation, pervasive during the coronavirus pandemic, present an opportunity for malicious actors to deceive consumers into revealing private information, buying fake products or falling to fraudulent schemes and sending money.
Phone and email scams are nothing new, but crises create an opportunity for those who prey on fear, and during the coronavirus pandemic, variations on old scams have cropped up that target the vulnerable.
In less than two weeks,a well-meaning post in a neighborhood Facebook group has evolved into an extremely organized support system for an entire community during the time San Francisco’s COVID-19 shelter-in-place order is in effect.
