Interview with Maria Dwight by “Future Age” Magazine
Maria Dwight, President and CEO
Gerontological Services, Inc., Santa Monica, Calif.
FutureAge: Looking ahead to the next 10 to 20 years, what issues concern you the most?
Maria Dwight: One is the economic realities of having a large elderly population, both from their ability to cope with the economic situation and society’s ability to serve them. I’m concerned that the workforce needed has not been trained, or wooed [into aging services], and that could be disastrous.
I’m also concerned about the access to health care and the appropriateness of the health care system, whether it can absorb the shock of handling non-acute, chronic health care, and the ability to seriously look at preventive medicine instead of curative medicine.
One thing that blew me away recently was at a meeting of the National Academies of Science, they talked about the impact of stem cell research. They talked about the amazing things that can be reversed or cured or ameliorated, from dementia to chronic disease. What will that mean to us? My hope is that people will live better, and that the technology will be not too long in coming and over the long run, could have huge impact on the quality of life.
I think we may see an absolutely astounding social change, the way we look at our lives, internationally and cooperatively. (I’m talking about those not of the lowest income.) In upper- and middle-income, people, we’ll see a thrust for knowledge and growth, not accepting stereotypes that preceded them, and the way they look at aging. AAHSA members should be looking not at sickness care but how to keep them healthy.
I think we’ll be an anachronism if we don’t change, until we understand that people want far more autonomous lives than we’ve allowed them. Things are going to change radically, and the Internet and technology is pushing that.
FA: Is this more than just the classic wellness model?
MD: Yes. I have problems with models. Everything is local. Those days of, “You like what we’ve got or we can’t help you” are gone. Can we tailor programs for different needs, whether in health, intellectual growth, or other things we haven’t looked at?
Another thing I hope is changing is the [treatment of] the end of life … both for those who are dying and those who love them. As part of the life journey, it is a very important learning experience for everybody. Through personal experience, I hope caregivers can get a deeper understanding of what’s happening. There’s got to be a new way of looking at that. And a new way of looking at multicultural living experiences. We’re living with people with disabilities and not hiding them away—the whole social norm is changing for the better.
One thing I think [is that] as a field and as individuals, we’re so damn serious! You’ve got to put fun back into late life. You have to have a reason to get up in the morning. You have to have some unexpected potential. Everything is so predictable. More spontaneity, more unexpected, unplanned, unregimented opportunities are needed.
FA: If the trend toward aging in place (and away from “institutional” or residential care) continues, is there a danger that those seniors will be isolated? What can we do about that?
MD: Older people will create their own solutions if the institutions don’t. I’m in Boston right now, the home of Beacon Hill Village and 303 Third Street, in Cambridge. I see a lot of co-op housing going up across the country. I think some people will want to live at home, but I see it in the boomers anyway, a great yearning for community, and a search for reconnection. A lot of people look for community. We see niche markets, such as the lesbian, gay and transgendered [community], and I think the search for community is strong in older people. I don’t think it will be what we think of as today’s CCRC. Get all the letters out of that except the “C” for community. I think there will be growth in that area, but don’t think our field is listening to that. There is also a huge imperative to be environmentally responsible and I don’t see our members responding. Among the public, 88 percent think it’s important. One provider told me recently that they were going to start recycling next month. That’s a 20-year-old idea!
FA: Regarding future consumers, there is a lot of conventional wisdom about what baby boomers will want 15 years from now. But do we really understand what they will want or need? Do they?
MD: I don’t think the boomers have a clue what they will want when they are old. I don’t think many people do. It will be a service-oriented society and it will be a two-class society. I think the first time the boomers ever bumped into the health system—the real health system—was with their parents, and they are disgusted. They will create some change in the next 10 years.
Conventional wisdom is also that boomers will have a second career and they will volunteer, and I haven’t seen any evidence of that. When we ask people how important it is to volunteer, they just don’t have the energy. The older cohort, those 70-plus now, are the last of the volunteers. The decline of the service organizations—Rotaries, Lions’ Clubs—will continue. I don’t think they’ll have the time. How are you going to start doing that if you haven’t all your life? This idea of second and third careers is great but you better make enough money in your first career to do so. It’s an elitist way of looking at late life.
But there are a lot of forward-thinking people [among providers] and those who really do get it. They have to be the advocates who change things. It’s got to be a peer thing that says we can do it. We can be successful, we should not hold ourselves back.
