Ottawa County Senior Resources Executive Director, Tory Thompson, right, invited Beth Kowalczyk, Chief Executive Officer of the Ohio Association of Area Agencies on Aging, left, to talk to the Ottawa County community about the effects of ageism. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

BY SHERI TRUSTY

PORT CLINTON – On June 29, Ottawa County Senior Resources, Cornerstone Caregiving, and Magruder Hospital hosted an event that could change perceptions about older adults, creating a community that is stronger for all generations. The Reframe & Refresh: Rethinking Aging One Sip at a Time afternoon tea at Magruder Hospital challenged misconceptions about aging and confronted the often-unspoken reality of discrimination against older adults.

Beth Kowalczyk, Chief Executive Officer of the Ohio Association of Area Agencies on Aging, was the guest speaker. She talked about ageism – discrimination based on negative assumptions about age – and its impact on older adults.

Leaders from organizations and businesses across Ottawa County attended the event, where they learned how to recognize ageism and how to combat it personally and corporately to promote positive change. The information was especially vital in Ottawa County, which has one of the highest populations of older adults in the state.

Kowalczyk said the first step is to help the public recognize ageism as an issue. Discrimination is an emotional topic until it is tied to age. The problem doesn’t lie so much in a lack of compassion as much as a lack of knowledge. Ageism is easily tolerated because few people realize that their interactions with older adults lack respect.

Older adults are often viewed as less capable than they are, less intelligent than they are, and less important to the community than they are. Those misconceptions lie not only at the personal level but also at the legislative level, where ageism policies are not prioritized.

There’s a cost to that. According to data provided by Kowalczyk, about $63 billion is spent by Medicare annually on health care for eight conditions attributable to ageism. Physicians sometimes dismiss

treatable conditions as an unavoidable feature of old age, and on the other end of the ageism-in-healthcare spectrum, older adults who have self-imposed ageism perceptions are less likely to seek medical or preventative care.

Those misconceptions have calculable effects.

“Older adults live 7.6 years longer when they have positive self-perceptions of aging,” Kowalczyk said.

Justin Moor, the President and CEO of the Area Office on Aging of NWO, wants that number to be a wakeup call to the community at large and to older adults. He said that ageism is so subtly ingrained in everyday interactions that is not noticed. Addressing ageism can help individuals have positive views on getting older.

“We don’t want to be anti- our older selves,” Moor said.

Ottawa County Senior Resources Executive Director, Tory Thompson, asked Kowalczyk to present the program in Port Clinton after hearing it at a conference.

“I had so many ah-ha moments,” Thompson said. “We really need to think differently about aging and the wording we use.”

Kowalczyk suggested replacing the word “seniors” – which has developed negative ageism connotations – with something different, like “older adults.” Thompson wants to rebrand the county’s senior centers to better reflect positive views of aging.

This is the perfect time to begin implementing changes because Ottawa County Senior Resources is at the cusp of a strategic planning process that will impact the next three to five years. Staff from Senior Resources and strategic planning consultants attended the program.

“As we get into our strategic planning, I wanted this to be on people’s minds,” Thompson said. “I want to rebrand our senior centers.”