News / Graying Pains
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Telemedicine and bridging Montana's digital divide
When COVID-19 safety protocols shifted whole sectors of the health care industry from in-person visits to a telehealth model, Arjun and Hannah Verma watched their parents - a pulmonologist and a...
Aligning with national network increases mobility and decreases social isolation
Carbon County is mostly rural. Coupled with its older population, and considering the current pandemic, social isolation worries Therese Picasso-Edwards. "[Seniors] just didn't feel that they are in...
Passing the volunteer torch
As longtime volunteers grow older, many want to take a step back to allow for more travel and leisure time. What will volunteer organizations do to fill the void, and how can we keep older...
Changing attitudes key to addressing ageism
Who's getting older? We all are. Yet denial, misinformation and fear often characterize this universal experience. One hundred years ago life expectancy was about 47 years. According to a report from...
A home of their own
Could senior cooperative housing, a model gaining popularity in states with aging populations, be the solution to alleviating social isolation and population loss in Montana's rural small towns? In...
Making the connection
It is not hard to associate aging adults with limited technological knowledge, nor is it difficult to understand that teens can jump onto a new device with ease. And anyone can understand that tech su...
Building community from the inside
"His mobile home was not livable," said Missoula Aging Services (MAS) Resource Specialist Linda Howard, about a client she worked with in Seeley Lake. This was not a problem Howard or MAS had the...
Cracking the transportation bottleneck
In 2010, the Whitehall Senior Center, an activity and meals hub for seniors in Whitehall, was trying to unload a bus and a van it had been using to transport its patrons and residents of a nearby...
Could a Japanese-style elder care insurance program work in Montana?
Last week in Graying Pains, the Missoulian's David Erickson examined the introduction and implementation of Kaigo Hoken, or care insurance, in Japan, the world's demographically oldest country. This...
Japan: A glimpse at Montana's future?
This is part 1 of a two-part story about financing elder care in aging populations. Part 2 - what new strategies could Montana explore? - will be published next week. Montana, the oldest state in the...
On-the-farm training
Last week's Graying Pains story explored the challenges of family farm succession as Montana's agricultural demographic ages, and a program designed to connect up-and-coming farmers in western...
Family farms and ranches face uncertain future as producers age out
The 68-year-old old poultry farmer pointed out the hen houses he built decades ago, providing details of each wooden tenement's residents. Hugh Spencer built the hen houses and accompanying grain...
Low-cost classes can help seniors stay fit
As Montana's aging population continues to grow (18.9% of Montanans are now 65 or older), rural residents face the same aging challenges as their urban counterparts but often with fewer resources. A l...
Bringing knowledge and comfort to the classroom
SEELEY LAKE - "Don't bring in a rocker - I don't need those kinds of things," Pearl Hawkins told Seeley Lake Elementary preschool teacher Sheila Devins on her first day as a foster grandparent. "I'm...
Statewide project on aging demographics to relaunch
On March 12, a collaboration of 16 Montana newsrooms launched the first story of a series titled Graying Pains, months in the making, exploring Montana's status as the demographically oldest state...
For rural elderly, it can take a village
It looked like a lot of senior gatherings: a chatty group of folks, mostly in their 70s and 80s, with friends and family in a church basement, dining on quiche, pastries, fresh fruit and other...
How, where and why Montana became the grayest state in the West
People have been parsing the human lifespan into a taxonomy of ages forever. Aristotle proposed three categories: youthful, prime of life and elderly. Two thousand years later, Shakespeare's Seven...
