In This Newsletter
Learning in Asia
Innovative Financing & Care Models for Senior Housing
Highlights from the Alliance to Improve Dementia Care
Thought Leadership
On the Horizon
From Our Board
Learning in Asia
2023 Asia Summit Recap: Bridging Complexity and Opportunity
This year marks the 10th Milken Institute Asia Summit in Singapore. The event brought together an exceptional audience of the world’s leading investors, philanthropists, family principals, family office representatives, and senior business executives to engage in a thoughtful and interactive program addressing the regional issues shaping the global agenda. Watch (or rewatch) any of the public sessions. The Future of Aging team was proud to convene two compelling panels at the event, detailed below.
Supporting a Caring Economy: Technology and Innovation Across the Asia Pacific Region
Diane Ty, senior director of the Future of Aging team, moderated a lively discussion about caregivers’ critical role in supporting older adults. Experts explored innovative technology solutions and social programs needed to support caregivers better across the Asia-Pacific region, elevating bright spots and opportunities to make progress.
Speakers included Kwang Cheak Tan, CEO of Agency for Integrated Care; Angelique Chan, executive director of the Centre for Ageing Research and Education (CARE) at the Duke-NUS Medical School and member of our Future of Aging Academic & Policy Council; Mary Ann Tsao, chairwoman of the Tsao Foundation, Singapore; Diane Ty, senior director, Future of Aging at the Milken Institute; and Ricky Choi, head of US Digital Health at Samsung Electronics America.
The Longevity Code: Unlocking the Potential of Healthy Aging
Rajiv Ahuja, associate director of the Future of Aging team, moderated a conversation on the best ways to extend healthy longevity and possibly reverse the aging process. Panelists offered practical advice on how we can incorporate habits into our lives to increase our health span—or the number of healthy years we enjoy.
Speakers included Brian Kennedy, distinguished professor of biochemistry and physiology at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore; Li Lian Ng, co-founder and managing director of Tetsuyu Healthcare; Dan Buettner, founder of Blue Zones, LLC; Evelyne Bischof, director of the Sheba Longevity Center at the Sheba Medical University Hospital in Israel; Diane Ty, senior director, Future of Aging at the Milken Institute; and Rajiv Ahuja, associate director, Future of Aging at the Milken Institute.
The Power of Ideas
Ahead of the Asia Summit, select speakers wrote for the Institute’s Power of Ideas essay series to share how they bridge complexity and opportunity to solve challenges. Cutting-edge approaches in health-care technology and longevity science were top of mind for our Asia Summit speakers in this collection. Read more below.
The New Care Ecosystem: Empowering Family Caregivers through Technology
Hon Pak, head of Digital Health at Samsung, and Ricky Choi emphasize the home as a hub for connected wellness and care. They highlight advances and adoption of telehealth, remote patient monitoring technology, and smart-home devices as tools for vast improvement in monitoring safety, health status, and care.
Blue Zones Project: Lessons Learned from the Longest-Lived People
Dan Buettner took inspiration from areas around the world that have achieved the healthiest life expectancies. He highlights evidence-based modifications to the living environment that can produce sustainable healthy habits and better outcomes, lower health-care costs, and increase economic returns.
Sharing our Knowledge
Ty provided her expertise to Channel News Asia in July as part of World Population Day to highlight the critical need for countries to plan for aging populations. As Asia grapples with the implications of population aging in many countries, it is important to consider how this will strain community health systems. Major changes in the way society cares for older adults, their families, and caregivers will be required to meet the needs of aging populations.
On July 18, Ahuja attended a roundtable event in New York hosted by Japanese Governor Yuji Kuroiwa of the Kanagawa Prefecture to discuss critical aging priorities. The conversation centered on age-friendly communities and public-private engagement to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Ahuja spoke to Next Avenue in July to emphasize the cultural-specific aspects of caregiving and how these differences can impact our understanding of dementia caregivers in diverse populations. The article focuses on Asian and Asian American cultures, the fastest-growing population of older Americans in the US. "One thing that people should know about caregiving in the Asian community is the importance of cultural competency and understanding," said Ahuja.
Innovative Financing & Care Models for Senior Housing
On July 13, the Milken Institute’s Future of Aging and Innovative Finance teams held a Financial Innovations Lab® (FIL) sponsored by CVS Health and the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) in Chicago. Our FIL team conducted over 80 key opinion leader interviews and researched strategies to address the lack of affordable housing and care for middle-income older adults. The “Innovative Financing & Care Models to Scale Affordable Senior Housing Solutions for Older Adults” Lab brought together over 40 leaders across senior housing, health care, government entities, finance, and research to prioritize and develop market-based solutions to business and public policy challenges. Research findings and actionable recommendations will be publicly distributed later this year.
Forty cross-sector leaders participate in the Financial Innovations Lab.
Ray Braun, president and CEO, NIC, and Kim Rustem, executive director of health equity strategy and innovation, CVS Health, participate in the Lab.
On August 23, Lauren Dunning, director of the Future of Aging, testified before California's Little Hoover Commission to discuss our recent work in senior housing as the state evaluates its California Master Plan for Aging. She highlighted several strategies to improve housing financing and care delivery for middle-income older adults, including value-based care partnerships between senior housing and health-care providers and data standardization across the care ecosystem to enable senior housing and care providers to better demonstrate their impacts on resident health outcomes. Dunning was joined by several other experts in this space, including Future of Aging Academic & Policy Council member Jennifer Molinsky, project director of the Housing an Aging Society Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Read Dunning’s testimony and watch the entire hearing.
Avery Wallace, senior associate for the Future of Aging, was featured in Her Stories Senior Housing, a podcast hosted by Severine Petras, CEO and co-founder of Priority Life Care. The podcast is dedicated to telling the origin stories of women who have built careers in senior housing. Wallace discussed her career path in senior housing and care and her current work at the Milken Institute.
Highlights from the Alliance to Improve Dementia Care
This summer proved to be an exciting and momentous time for innovation in dementia care. On July 6, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted traditional full approval for Leqembi® (lecanemab-irmb), a new treatment for patients in the mild cognitive impairment and early stages of Alzheimer’s disease from Alliance to Improve Dementia Care Steering Committee member Eisai, in partnership with Biogen. In clinical trials, Leqembi demonstrated success in slowing the progression of memory loss and cognitive impairment in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) also cleared the way for Medicare to cover this treatment.
On July 31, CMS announced the Guiding an Improved Dementia Experience (GUIDE) Model, a new alternative payment model for comprehensive dementia care that aims to support people living with dementia and their unpaid family caregivers more holistically. These focus areas are critical pillars of our Alliance to Improve Dementia Care. The model aims to improve the quality of life for people living with dementia, reduce strain on caregivers, and enable people living with dementia to remain in their homes and communities. Embedded within the model’s interprofessional care team is a care navigator who will help people living with dementia and their caregivers access clinical services and community-based supports, reflecting the recommendations put forth by the Alliance in our March 2023 report, Guiding the Care Journey: Building Dementia Workforce and System Capacity through Care Navigation. CMS anticipates releasing the Request for Applications this fall, with the model launching July 1, 2024, and running for eight years.
Alliance Steering Committee member Eli Lilly & Company announced exciting Phase III clinical trial results for donanemab, another disease-modifying treatment for individuals in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Among participants with early symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease and amyloid and tau pathology, donanemab treatment was shown to significantly slow the clinical progression of the disease at 76 weeks.
The culmination of these exciting announcements led to a compelling Advances in Science webinar on August 15 with Richard J. Hodes, MD, director of the National Institute on Aging. Moderated by Future of Aging’s Ahuja, Hodes detailed the progress in Alzheimer’s disease research for our audience, including advances in genetics, risk factors, prevention, biomarkers, diagnostic tools, clinical research, and therapeutics. The two also discussed recent advancements in the growing field of geroscience. Watch the full conversation.
In August, the Alliance welcomed a new Steering Committee member organization, Otsuka, represented by Eli Perez, senior director of patient advocacy and stakeholder engagement.
Thought Leadership
In September, Future of Aging’s Ahuja co-authored a collaborative position statement with a group of global thought leaders for the Expert Panel on Brain Health of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. The statement focuses on the critical role of life course brain health in shaping mental well-being during the later stages of life. The authors advocate for a holistic approach that integrates medical, psychological, and social frameworks with culturally tailored interventions across the life span to promote brain health and overall mental well-being in aging adults across all communities.
In a new report, Shifting the Retirement Paradigm: Moving toward Lifetime Financial Security, the Milken Institute focused on how Americans can manage lifetime finances to lead to a financially secure retirement. Each section outlines relevant issues, recent developments, and areas where change is needed or has occurred. The report describes challenges and presents recommendations for consideration by policymakers, the private sector (including financial firms and employers), and individual Americans of all ages who are thinking about how to ensure their long-term financial security. It also addresses the work landscape, calling on employers to change hiring practices and work environments to promote longer working lives, value multigenerational workforces, and increase retraining opportunities for older workers. We thank Future of Aging sponsors M Center of Excellence, Edward Jones, and Bank of America for sponsoring this report.
Paul Irving, senior advisor for the Future of Aging, spoke on a panel titled "The Business Case for Innovation in Aging" at the University of Southern California Aging is Now | Aging is the Future of Entrepreneurship Symposium. This one-day gathering of practitioners, researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders offered discussion, knowledge-sharing, and networking regarding business opportunities in products, services, and systems for the emerging market of older adults. Irving was also quoted in an article for MarketWatch emphasizing the need for people to stay fulfilled after retirement through volunteering, family, community activity, or part-time work to keep our brains healthy and ward off cognitive decline.
On the Horizon
The 2023 Milken Institute Future of Health Summit will confront the most significant issues affecting medical research, preventative care, and public health. Join us November 6-8 in Washington, DC, as we bring together medical experts, leading scientists, and political leaders to foster innovative solutions and turn ideas into actionable policy. The Future of Aging team is excited to convene four public panels and one invitation-only session on the most pressing aging issues, including brain health, social isolation, and senior housing. This year’s Summit will also mark the first in-person Alliance to Improve Dementia Care meeting since its launch in July 2020.
From Our Board
Alice Bonner, senior advisor for aging at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and chair of Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition, led the coalition in gathering more than 100 government leaders, experts, clinicians, and consumer advocates to address recommendations by the National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality report from the National Academies.
Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, provided her expertise for an Oprah Daily article highlighting the ways to stay engaged, healthy, and content as we age.
Angelique Chan, executive director of the Centre for Ageing Research and Education at Duke-NUS Medical School, co-authored a commentary piece for Channel News Asia highlighting the implications of loneliness as a public health challenge for an aging population in Singapore.
Pinchas Cohen, dean of the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, led a one-day Aging is Now | Aging is the Future Entrepreneurship Symposium in September. The gathering of practitioners, researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders offered discussion, knowledge-sharing, and networking regarding business opportunities in products, services, and systems for the emerging market of older adults.
Catherine Collinson, CEO and president of Transamerica Institute, spoke to Yahoo Finance regarding the 23rd Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey, which found that younger Americans are more confident that they’ll be financially prepared for retirement when the time comes, and more Gen X and boomers are discouraged about how long their savings will last.
Joseph Coughlin, founder and director at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab, provided his expertise to BBC World Business on the challenges and opportunities of aging for societies and businesses as global life expectancies are expected to increase in the next century.
Ken Dychtwald, founder and CEO of AgeWave, and Edward Jones published a joint study exploring both sides of today’s retirement experience, comprehensively and realistically, to help retirees and pre-retirees make resilient choices to thrive in retirement.
Phyllis Barkman Ferrell, executive-on-loan, Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC), Eli Lilly & Company, discussed the scope and mission of the DAC and the progress being made to stop Alzheimer's in its tracks in an article for Ideagen’s Catalyze Magazine.
Linda Fried, dean of the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, gave her tips to Crain’s New York Business for giving New Yorkers a better quality of life.
Scott Frisch, executive vice president and chief operating officer of AARP, wrote for AARP’s The Journal, emphasizing the need for age inclusion in the workplace. He highlighted the business case for intergenerational teams and how healthy longevity should be top of mind for employee health.
Terry Fulmer, president of the John A. Hartford Foundation, was interviewed by The Hill about the rising cost of elder care as demand increases due to an aging baby boomer population.
Teresa Ghilarducci, director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the New School, spoke to Reuters about her new research challenging the longstanding belief that the decision on when to claim Social Security revolves around retirement.
Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University, highlighted the significance of maternal and child health to Newswise while commenting on Braidwood Management v. Becerra, which challenges the Affordable Care Act’s preventive services requirements.
Bob Kramer, co-founder and strategic advisor of NIC, spoke on the value-based care panel at the 26th annual Ziegler Senior Living Finance + Strategy Conference.
Abby Levy, managing partner and co-founder of Primetime Partners, appeared on Bloomberg Technology to discuss AI and aging, fall prevention, and health-care personalization.
Becca Levy, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, was interviewed for Oprah Daily to provide takeaways from her new book, Breaking the Age Code, which explores age belief systems across cultures and how cultural differences can inform life and health spans.
Sarita Mohanty, president and CEO of The SCAN Foundation, was named to the Forbes 50 Over 50: IMPACT list for her work with the SCAN Foundation. In July, The SCAN Foundation hosted its inaugural United for Health Equity in Aging Summit, which aims to reduce health inequities and improve the lives of older adults from historically marginalized communities, with an emphasis on older adults of color.
Jennifer Molinsky, project director of the Housing an Aging Society Program at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, co-authored a research piece on what the US can learn from Germany’s intentional multigenerational housing demonstrations.
Eunice Lin Nicols, co-CEO of CoGenerate, spoke to The Nation about the importance of intergenerational relationships as Gen Z rises to tackle societal issues, and how a lot can be learned from the generations before them.
Hon Pak, head of digital health at Samsung, presented the new Galaxy Watch6 series at the Galaxy Unpacked conference. The sensor allows users to monitor their ECG, blood pressure, body composition, and heart rate at all times to form healthy habits and improve quality of life.
Penny Pennington, managing partner at Edward Jones, affirmed the company’s commitment to fighting Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias at the 2023 Affair to Remember Gala to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Missouri.
Andrew Scott, professor of economics at the London Business School and co-founder of The Longevity Forum, was interviewed by the Financial Times to provide his expertise on how governments and individuals can best navigate a world where people live longer lives.
Trent Stamp, CEO of the Eisner Foundation, was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article highlighting the impact of an intergenerational orchestra group with members ranging from 14 to 70 years old.
Fernando Torres-Gil, director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging, spoke on Jefferson Public Radio to discuss the crisis of the high cost of living in California, where caregivers are challenged to make ends meet with their current wages.
Jennifer Wong, director of Wallis Annenberg GenSpace, spoke on a panel, “From Barriers to Opportunities: Promoting Gender Equity & Inclusion for All Ages,” at the Social Innovation Summit.