my name is Kiren Emerson I'm a gerontologist at the University of Georgia I really believe that everyone should take an interest in the field of gerentology because not only is it important to you professionally but also personally and I hope to over the next few minutes convince you that this is an incredibly important field that everyone should take an interest in let's just start with the basics what is gerontology and how is it different from geriatrics gerontology is the study of Aging at the individual and the population level it's an interdisciplinary field so we take information from biology from Humanities public policy economics sociology psychology Public Health un name it we do a lot and that's what makes this field so exciting we look at how aging influences society and how Society can influence the aging process we look at disease patterns and we examine how we can age successfully and healthfully we look at public policy and how aging can influence those pretty much the only thing we do not do is look at the clinical and medical side of things we leave that to the clinicians which we call geriatricians now that I've given you idea of what gerontology is let's talk about some statistics stay with me these are pretty interesting in 2010 we had about 40 million older adults about 13% of the population that's already a lot but by 2030 the projections are that we're going to have 72 million older adults about 20% of the population what that means is that one out of every five people are going to be age 65 and older in 2030 in the US Georgia is actually a particularly interesting state to look at we have the fourth fastest growing population of older adults this increase is in great part due to the baby boom generation they're the ones born between 1946 and 1964 did you know that for the next 18 years every 8 seconds a baby boomer turned 65 in total that's more than 10,000 a day but that's not the whole story life expectancy in general is increasing in 1900 life expectancy was 47 now in Japan life expect expectancy is 83 in the United States it's a little bit lower it's 78.6 let me show you what some of these numbers look like using a pictoral version of these numbers using population pyramids on the left hand side you have blue for boys and pink for girls it's fairly straightforward and down here you have these numbers of age categories so at the very bottom you have kids age0 to four and then as you go up they get a little bit older these are middle-aged people and all the way at the very top these are the centenarians 100 and older you can see that aren't that many this is in 1950 so it actually looks like a pyramid right most people are down here at the bottom which are the children now let's see what happens up until 2010 I'm just going to show you what looks what it looks like every 5 years so this is 1960 1965 1970 80 85 90 95 2000 and let's stop at 2005 and see what's happened since 1950 you can tell already it doesn't look like a pyramid anymore right most of the people actually right here in this middle bulge area which is where the Baby Boomers are you can see lower fertility less babies are being born and most importantly for us as gerontologists you can see a lot more people right up here so you see that centenarians and people in their 90s are becoming more common you're also going to notice there's way more women than men and this is common in pretty much every society in the world that women live longer than men and you can see that pictured right here so let's look what that's going to look like in the future we have projections up until 2050 and again this is going to go by 5e increments 2010 2020 2030 2040 35 and let's stop at 2050 these are projections and you can see it no longer at all looks like a pyramid it actually looks a little bit like an upside down pyramid of sorts but mostly you can see there's lots more people up here and this is 70 this is about the 65 cutof off point you can see a lot more centenarians up there in 1950 that was just a line so you can see a lot more people up here so just from this easy picture way of looking at the world you can see that the world is aging and why in the future gerontology is can become more and more of an important field of study so why do those numbers matter well first it's personal you're aging right now and everyone around you is aging and you want to be able to face that aging future with confidence and to know what you can expect and you want to be able to help those around you age successfully even if you can't quite imagine yourself as an aging adult right now imagine those in your life that are older like a grandparent or an older Mentor you want to be able to know what they're going through and to be able to help them through their aging process and odds are high that you might be a caregiver at some point in your life and the skills and information that you can learn in gerontology can help you guide that person and yourself through the caregiving process second it's also incredibly important for your professional life might not seem intuitive but pretty much any and all careers that you choose are going to somehow be related to aging there are more obvious careers like geriatrician but even those are in short supply right now we have four certified geriatricians in the US for every 10,000 person's age 75 and older it's not nearly enough and only 1% of people in medical school are choosing geriatrics as their specialty so clearly it's going to be a shortage in the future there are also not enough Healthcare direct workers right now we're going to need 1.1 million more of those direct care workers to help with our older population then there's public health workers the endless supply of opportunities that you have for helping with quality of life that's incredibly important and physical therapists with 80% of older adults having at least one chronic condition and 50% having two or more you're going to have a lot of older clients as a physical therapist even careers that might not be so intuitive to involve aging are going to involve some gerontological knowledge what about a pediatrician while grandparents raising grandchildren is on the rise and so you might see grandparents bringing in their grandchildren into your office what about developing a new website a onethird of baby boomers are the ones who are on the internet guess who has a lot of money one study actually showed at about 70% of the disposable income is going to be among older adults in the future so who are you going to advertise to what about law while Wills in Testament financial planning Healthcare planning those are all going to bring you older clients how about fashion designer just because someone has arthritis and has trouble with buttons and zippers doesn't mean they don't want to dress fashionably so having older clients in mind for a fashion design can be incredibly important how about something like a pizza delivery person a few years ago there was a story in the newspaper that an 82-year-old woman Jee Wilson had ordered the same pizza every day for 3 years dietary choices aside one day she didn't call in to order her usual pepperoni pizza and the Domino's workers got worried she didn't call in for 3 days and so one of the workers went out to her house knocked on the door knocked on the windows and she didn't answer so that a pizza delivery person called 911 and they realized that Jean had fallen and couldn't get up so the pizza delivery person saved This Woman's life so there's pretty much no career that you can think of that isn't going to have to do with aging my third point about the impact of Aging is what it has on society and public policy if people are living that much longer it's going to pretty much affect every part of society and that includes education housing churches local governments public policy social soci Security Programs you name it it's going to be affected so let's just look at one idea here what about retirement if people live 30 years past their retirement what's that going to look like how is that going to influence Healthcare in the country what about pension plans what about savings Social Security what about those people who choose to retire but still want to be engaged in the community are there programs for them what about the people who don't retire what are the implications for you about that as you can see just this one issue is really intricately woven in our society and there's so many more issues that we could talk about so I hope that I've convinced you that gerontology is incredibly important but before I leave you I want to challenge and talk about some of the myths that you might know about aging the first myth is that it's okay to treat an older adult as if they're a child this is so common that we even have a term for it we call it Elder speak even if it's done unintentionally it is not okay to talk to an older adult as they're a child it's patronizing and condescending so just talk to them as if they're an adult and be respectful myth number two a person becomes old the day they turn 65 65 is actually a fairly arbitrary number and you don't wake up on your 65th birthday and all of a sudden you're old and for a lot of people old age is actually the best time of their life just look at the Rolling Stones they're still touring and together their age is 270 or look at Betty White she hosted Saturday Night Live at the age of 88 myth number three all older adults are sick and disabled or both that's not true yes a lot of conditions are related to old age and yes physical changes will happen as you age but that doesn't mean that all older adults are sick and disabled in fact most older adults actually describe their health as good very good or even excellent myth number four all older adults live in a nursing home the reality here is that actually less than 5% of older adults live in a nursing home at any given time so it's not that common myth number five old age is accompanied by memory loss and dementia while memory changes do occur with age this varies greatly by people and intelligence and creativity does not necessarily Decline and while age is a risk factor for dementia it is not a normal part of aging myth number six older adults are all alike older adults are actually the most diverse group you'll probably ever meet they've lived long and varying lives and assuming that they're all alike is just not accurate myth number seven older adults have no no interest in or capacity for sexual relations that's not true like a lot of other things sexual behavior in old age looks a lot like it did for them in their middle and younger years in fact Studies have shown that it's more about health not age per se and that about 70% of men and women are still actively engaged in sexual activities later in life myth number eight personality changes with age which is why there's so many cranky old people out there that's not true personality actually remains fairly stable though some person it traits become a little more pronounced in old age so if you're a cranky person now you're going to be a cranky old person later myth number nine you can't teach an old dog new tricks that's not true older adults can learn new things they might be a little bit slower but if you give them some extra time a little extra practice they can learn new things just like anyone else myth number 10 I'm not going to be a gerontologist or a geriatrician so I don't need to know about aging have you been listening to me clearly you need to know about aging you are aging and society around you is aging and that's important to you both professionally as well as personally so you need to be prepared for an aging Society now where can you find out more about this right here at the University of Georgia's Institute of gerontology we offer several programs we have an undergraduate class called aspects of aging and we offer a graduate certificate in gerontology you can do that on its own or in combination with another graduate degree in any field and we also offer a masters in public health with a focus on Aging if you want to know more about any of these programs just visit our website or give us a call we'd love to hear from you