A recent daylong workshop鈥斺€淒esign-Thinking for Community-Supported Senior Care,鈥� organized by the and the in the 鈥攂rought together interested individuals from across the University and the Central New York community to address a growing concern: As professional caregiver resources continue to dwindle, how can we meet the needs of seniors, especially single seniors living alone?
Brainstorming solutions to address seniors’ needs and aspirations, left to right: Janet Wilmoth, director of the Aging Studies Institute; Dalton Stevens, Ph.D. candidate in sociology; and Mindy Stewart-Coffee, COO of Integrity Home Care and Hospice.
鈥淚n the U.S., the professional caregiver shortage is worsening as the number of single seniors, living alone without local family, rises. This is going to affect individuals and the healthcare system in ways that most Gen X and younger Baby Boomers haven鈥檛 anticipated,鈥� says , assistant professor of industrial and interaction design in the School of Design. Miller put together the event, held at the Aging Studies Institute in Lyman Hall, along with Mindy Stewart-Coffee, chief operating officer of Kansas City-based Integrity Home Care and Hospice.
鈥淣early three-quarters of the U.S. population over 70 has too many assets to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford assisted care for activities of daily living,鈥� Stewart-Coffee says. 鈥淭he healthcare and insurance industries call this group the 鈥�70 percent in the middle.鈥欌€�
Miller adds, 鈥淢indy and I聽discovered聽that we hold the same assumption: solutions will have to聽come from communities themselves, beyond the regulated industry.聽The question is, how best to empower聽people to聽help themselves in sustainable ways?鈥�
Until recently, the larger design world has stayed away from the issue of senior care because industries like the tech sector didn鈥檛 see a value to funding it. This is changing as the health and wellness care sectors embrace practices like Design Thinking and Service Design. Industry experts have framed the problems associated with aging-in-place well, but there is still a need for quality-of-life solutions, the workshop organizers state. It is in this gap that the greatest opportunities lay. If the institutional resource gap cannot be resolved, then is a community-based approach possible?
VPA Council member Johanna Chehi discusses the aging experience with M.F.A. Design graduate students.
The workshop drew 35 participants, including graduate students and faculty from the , and the School of Design. Stewart-Coffee and Wendy Goidel, principal of the Long Island-based law firm Goidel Law Group, provided an assessment of current solutions and case studies聽from聽the field to inform the聽group鈥檚聽thinking, and the participants applied a process of problem-framing, ideation, prototyping and testing employed by design and innovation teams.
鈥淎ll of the insights and ideas we generated during the workshop were collected so we can carry these forward into our own initiatives,鈥� Miller says. 鈥淎nd several attendees have expressed interest in forming a social media group to keep the conversation going.
鈥淥ne of the greatest outcomes was simply meeting like-minded people from across campus and the community who are actively invested in working on this issue. We鈥檒l need to聽work across disciplines with one another to create viable solutions.鈥�
