National Public Health Week: Aging Cafe

Aging Café 2020

Vincenza Bartolillo

Masters of Public Health

Hofstra University

 Every year, Hofstra University takes part in National Public Health week. For the first full week of April, universities and organizations across the country hold a variety of events in order to shed light on the important topics of our nations health. One of the events I had a pleasure to be a part of during NPHW was the Aging Café, created and held by students enrolled in the course dedicated to Population Aging within Hofstra’s Master of Public Health Program. The purpose of this event is to reframe the way people think and talk about aging so that it is more positive, accurate and inclusive. A better understanding of aging is important because the number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to nearly double from 52 million in 2018 to 95 million by 2060. To put it in perspective, in just 40 years, the over 65 population will represent 25% of the US population (Source: Population Reference Bureau’s Population Bulletin,“Aging in the United States,” July 2019)

The event is held in the form of a “Café” in order to create an informal, supportive and comfortable environment to talk about a topic that many people find uncomfortable, yet unavoidable: Aging. This event is not only directed toward older adults, but to the community in general. Our event included presentations and activities for people of all ages, and truly believe it was beneficial to all who chose to attend. We hoped that by creating an interactive and information filled event, we can be the start of the change to stop ageism and discrimination against the older population, and shed light on the important topics surrounding Aging.

This year our Aging Café took place on April 21^st 2020, and was viewed by the community in a much different way than previous years. In response to the world wide pandemic of COVID-19, my fellow peers and I had to transition from holding an in person event, to presenting our information virtually through Zoom. Changing this event into a virtual meeting posed a challenge for us. We had our difficulties in transforming what would have been “stations” into presentations. Luckily there were some positives that came out of going virtual. Using Zoom still allowed us to make our presentations interactive. Things like live polls and the option to chat allowed the viewers to still be active participants in our event. In addition, going virtual allowed us to reach audiences that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach such as those who want to attend but live too far to travel, or those who do not have the ability to attend in person due to medical reasons. Most importantly, it taught us a valuable lesson to bring with us into the field of public health. As we know, programs and events don’t always go as planned in life, so this event showed us the importance of being flexible and having the ability to adapt to new circumstances when necessary.

This year, over 115 people across the nation tuned into our virtual Aging Café. Each student pair took a few minutes to describe their topic and provided the audience with tons of important information surrounding healthy aging. Some of the topics we covered were : Audio and visual Simulations of Aging, Social Connectedness of Older Adults, Creativity and Aging, and Aging Powerfully Through Mindfulness. Attendees of the Aging Café all received the recording of the event to look back at the presentations, as well as all resources that were used to create them. We also sent out an evaluation form via email in order to learn how effective our event was to the viewers, and what could be improved upon for the years to come. We hope this event allowed our participants to understand aging in a different way than before, and that it inspires them to be a part of the change towards healthy, inclusive, beautiful aging.