Healthy Aging: A Healthcare Imperative

As technology advances, the ability of healthcare to keep people alive increases, but not always in ways conducive to improving quality of life. It is the hope of healthcare providers that quality of life improves as well. However, there are many factors that make this piece of the puzzle challenging. In this course, the older adult population is examined both for the challenges they face and the effects of an increasing elder population on the healthcare delivery system. The course will focus on specific assessment of the impact of unhealthy lifestyles that create the co-morbidities, health disparities commonly seen in aging populations, and the improvements that can be made in health and technological illiteracy/accessibility on older adults. Extending this assessment, students create a cultural care model for end of life care. These explorations of older adulthood culminate in evaluating the underlying cultural issues that need to be addressed to improve population health and resiliency in meeting the challenges during the end of the life spectrum.