Ron Baecker at Health 2.0: “The Unmentionables”
I was at Health 2.0 in San Jose California to announce the vision and goals of famli.net Communications Inc., a commercialization partner of TAGlab. I was able to attend one late afternoon that expanded and blew my mind:
The Unmentionables:
Alexandra Drane
“Life sucks disease.”
Moderator Alexandra Drane, founder of Eliza Corp and champion of The Unmentionables session set the stage:
“Every day new evidence arises that ‘The Unmentionables’ – life factors – don’t just influence health, they can define it: sex, divorce, death of a loved one, a bad boss. They each lead to the ‘life sucks disease’.
Caregivers need help
Unpaid caregivers are particularly vulnerable: more than 66 million unpaid family caregivers in the U.S. cost employers $25 billion worth of lost productivity representing more than $500 billion dollars of work per year. Using a “vulnerability” chart, Drane linked the likelihood of disease to major stressors impacting “the silver tsunami”
- work
- financial
- relationships
- loneliness
Unmentionables Presenters offer Solutions
Senior Link: Bill McIvor, Executive VP and Chief Dev Officer created Senior Link, to help support caregivers. Described as a “virtual nursing home” with tools for enabling caregiver communication and collaboration.
TrueLink: Founder and CEO Kai Stinchcombe was motivated by personal situations of elder financial abuse resulting from his parents’ health and competence significantly deteriorating. According to a MetLife report, Elder financial abuse, is the “Crime of the 21st Century” amounting to $36 billion in the U.S.
Honor: Seth Sternberg, recognized that even paid caregivers are underpaid, undervalued, and under-appreciated. He created Honor, which gives home care workers the tools they need to do a good job
- appropriate matching
- information about their clients,
- freedom to set their own schedules.
The Honor caregivers mantra
“We want to be treated like the professionals we are.”
Changing system paradigms
Cleveland Clinic: Adrienne Boissy, Chief Experiences Officer of one of the most respected US health systems, focuses on the quality of staff relationships with their patients. A former neurologist and neuro-ethicst, her goal:
“The health care system moves from measures of ‘satisfaction’ to records of and judgments about ‘experience’.
Zero Hospice Project : BJ Miller, Executive Director of Zen Hospice spoke of the difference between healing and curing, all with the goal of ensuring truly human-centered palliative care. His point:
“Dying people are still alive.”
Each of these presentations and each presenter was inspiring: giving concrete proof to the importance of helping us age gracefully.
Tweets from The Unmentionables courtesy Geriatrician, Dr Leslie Kernisan @GeriTech
