HealthCommentary

Exploring Human Potential

The Bob Butler Tribute: A 2 Week Seminar on Aging

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Mike Magee

Over the past decade, I’ve written and lectured extensively on all aspects of aging. Some of my interest was clearly tied to the challenges of managing a father who developed Alzheimer’s Disease, a mother who died of ovarian cancer and a mother-in-law challenged with vascular dementia. That interest was reinforced by our own aging and the physical, mental and spiritual dimensions of this complex process. But my intellectual curiousity was primarily stirred by having had the opportunity to interact with Bob Butler MD who died on July 4, 2010.

Bob Butler was the unparalleled leader of geriatrics in America. He was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health. He was instrumental in the creation of  American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, the Alzheimer’s Disease Association and the International Longevity Center. He educated the public on age discrimination or “ageism” as he termed it. Most of all, he encouraged a wide range of health educators to become engaged in a policy arena that would shape the future of health care in America.

He did this all in an inclusive, wise and thoughtful manner. A few years back, I had the opportunity to address the International Longevity Center. In Bob’s introduction of me, he emphasized the need to actively advance education in the field in support of wise policy. In considering how best to honor him, I have selected 14 pieces out of the many I have authored over the past 10 years, a seminar on aging which will run daily for the next two weeks. Together the pieces represent the remarkable complexity, diversity, and opportunity embedded in Bob’s life work.

The Bob Butler Tribute Seminar
Day 1. Aging Demographics (press here)
Day 2. The Challenge of Longevity
Day 3. Measuring Aging Vitality and Independence
Day 4. When Caregivers Need Care
Day 5. Long Distance Caregivers
Day 6. The Economics of Living Longer
Day 7. Financing Home Health Care
Day 8. Elder Abuse and Vulnerable Elders
Day 9. Aging and Obesity
Day 10. Untangling Alzhiemers
Day 11. Incontinence: The Silent Disability
Day 12. Operating on the Elderly
Day 13. Planning a Dignified Death
Day 14. The Best Place To Die

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