THE NEW MAP OF LIFE

AFTER THE PANDEMIC

It is said that culture is like the air we breathe. We don’t notice it until it’s gone.

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing into focus a once invisible culture that guides us through life. Seemingly overnight, we experienced profound changes in the ways that we work, socialize, learn, and engage with our neighborhoods and larger communities.

For a short time, before new routines and practices replace familiar old ones, we can see with greater clarity the positive and negative aspects of our former lives. The suddenness and starkness of this transformation allows us to examine daily practices, social norms and institutions from perspectives rarely allowed.

The fragility of the global economy becomes glaringly apparent as critical supply chains faulter, unemployment surges, and markets vacillate. Tacit assumptions about health care systems become clear as we see how they function, fail to function, and have long underserved large parts of the population. Just as sure, sheltering in place allows us to appreciate precious details of our lives that we have taken for granted: the appeal of workplaces, the comfort of human touch, dinner parties, travel, and paychecks. Indeed, through ambivalent eyes we also recognize ways that life is better as we shelter in place.

The premise of the New Map of Life:™ After the Pandemic project is that we have a fleeting window of time that affords us an unprecedented opportunity to examine our lives. Going forward, life will be different and by compiling the insights we have today we can inform and guide the culture that will inevitably emerge from our collective experience. Your insights can contribute to the reshaping of social norms, systems, and practices that shape our collective futures.

Since the founding of the Stanford Center on Longevity, we have advocated for a major redesign of life that better supports century-long lives. More recently, we undertook the New Map of Life™ initiative, which focuses on envisioning a world where people experience a sense of purpose, belonging, and worth at all stages of life. As tragedies unfold before our eyes, we aim to capture the lessons they teach. With your help, we can compile current insights, fleeting thoughts and deeper reflections about the ways we live now so that going forward we bolster, modify and reinvent cultures that improve quality of life for ourselves, our children, and future generations.

The New Map of Life™ initiative is made possible with generous support from the Annenberg Foundation.

Reframing Inclusive Design for the
BIPoC Communities

August 8, 2020 | Ricardo Gomes, San Francisco State University

In order to begin to dismantle the barriers of systemic racism by design, industries, institutions and our respective design disciplines must make a commitment to establishing an “inclusive design” mission that will support “building and investing” in the formation of a new paradigm of access, education, leadership training and mentoring in design for the underrepresented BIPoC community. Read more

COVID's Ageist Reckoning
and What You Can Do
About It

August 11, 2020 | Barbara Waxman MS, MPA, PCC

The COVID-19 crisis has initiated a reckoning in our society by exposing aspects of it that have been unhealthy for far too long. Specifically, I’m referring to long-standing dramatic disparities created by racism, sexism, ableism, and ageism. I believe that part of the reason we are examining and beginning to make course corrections is that the pandemic, in many ways, has given us the time to consider our individual and collective roles in the gamut of ‘isms’. It’s incumbent on each one of us to recognize injustice, to learn about how each one of us can help heal our nation, and then to take action, big or small, to affect positive change. Read more

Millions of America’s Working Poor
May Lose Out on Key Anti-Poverty
Tax Credit Because of the Pandemic

August 3, 2020 | The Conversation

The pandemic is driving American families to the edge, with tens of millions at risk of losing their homes and over 1 in 10 U.S. adults reporting their households didn’t have enough to eat in the previous week. While Congress debates extending unemployment benefits that expired on July 31 and other additional aid, there’s an important program that already exists that could help struggling Americans get through the crisis however long it lasts. Known as the earned income tax credit, or EITC, it provides aid primarily to the working poor. In a typical year, it lifts more than 8.5 million people out of poverty, while improving the health and well-being of parents and children. Read more

The New Normal in a Post-Vaccine
World

August 11, 2020 | Next Avenue

Imagine this scenario, perhaps a year or two in the future: An effective COVID-19 vaccine is routinely available and the world is moving forward. Life, however, will likely never be the same — particularly for people over 60.

That is the conclusion of geriatric medical doctors, aging experts, futurists and industry specialists. Experts say that in the aftermath of the pandemic, everything will change, from the way older people receive health care to how they travel and shop. Also overturned: their work life and relationships with one another. Read more

Ageism Is Making the Pandemic
Worse

March 28, 2020 | The Atlantic

"Envision, for a moment, a world in which the rapidly spreading coronavirus is mostly infecting people under the age of 50...If your imagined reaction differs from your current one, then we must ask some hard questions. Most crucial: Is the reality that elders are most likely to get ill and die from COVID-19 affecting the way countries—particularly the U.S.—are responding to the pandemic? There are many logistical and political reasons why America’s response has been weaker compared with other countries’. But as a doctor, I’ve encountered evidence that suggests ageism is playing a role too, in part because ageism has always shaped the kind of medical care that older Americans receive." Read more

What’s Behind the Nursing Home
Horror

May 17, 2020 | The New York Times

"We knew it from the beginning. A nursing home in Washington State was the center of the first known coronavirus outbreak in the United States. We knew that institutions caring for the elderly and disabled in close quarters would be particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.

But we did not act. Personal protective equipment, special training and extra staff went almost exclusively to our critical care facilities. Nursing homes got virtually nothing." Read more

A Pandemic Lockdown
Just for Older People? No!

July 3, 2020 | Chris Farrell in Next Avenue

"An idea is gaining traction among some economists and scholars to deal with the pandemic in America: Isolate and lockdown older Americans, possibly until there is a vaccine. Everyone else gets to go back to work and regain something resembling normalcy.

Some proponents call it “shielding” the eldest, usually defined as those 65 and older. Others prefer terms like “targeting” or “cocooning.” One Georgia freeway sign said: “Isolate the Elderly.” I’d label this pandemic proposal wrong, deeply wrong.

Simply put, Orwellian age-based segregation will undermine the economy’s vitality, betray society’s values and won’t contain the virus." Read more

Socially "Scented" Connections
During the Pandemic

July 8, 2020 | Julia Randell-Khan

The Scented Walled Garden in a west London park has a prescient history for our current pandemic. It is the original kitchen garden on the site of the 14th century Palingswick Palace where the mistress of King Edward III lived. Her name was Alice Perrers. She would arrive by barge on the River Thames from Westminster to spend time at the estate. All that is left is the stables (now a café) and the Walled Garden which would have been the kitchen garden of a manor house built on the site. Historical fiction novels1 recount how the orphan Alice Perrers rose to be the “Sun Queen“ under the patronage of King Edward III and become one of the wealthiest and influential women in England in the late 1300s. Read more

The New Boomerang Kids
Could Change American
Views of Living at Home

July 3, 2020 | The Atlantic

For the most part, the pandemic has restricted motion in America. But one exception has been a large-scale nationwide reshuffling of humans between homes. Before the coronavirus came to the United States, many of the country’s young adults were working, studying, and building lives on their own. Now a great deal of them are back to living with their parents. Read more

The Future of Work Isn’t What
People Think It Is

June 24, 2020 | The New York Times

The work force that powers our economy today — in times of stability and in crisis — is a low-wage service work force that is disproportionately made up of black women and other women of color, and largely unprotected by our safety net. These workers take care of us in different ways, and it took a pandemic for the nation to recognize they are the critical engine of our economy.

But we don’t take care of them. At all. Read more

Americans far more likely to say
coronavirus has strengthened their faith, rather
than weakened it.

April 30, 2020 | Pew Research Center

One-quarter of U.S. adults overall (24%) say their faith has become stronger because of the coronavirus pandemic, while just 2% say their faith has become weaker. The majority say their faith hasn’t changed much (47%) or that the question isn’t applicable because they were not religious to begin with (26%). The most religious Americans – those who frequently pray and attend services (at least in typical times), and who rate religion as very important to them – are far more likely than others to say their faith has grown stronger as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. In other words, the self-reported strengthening of religious faith has been most pronounced within a segment of the public that was already quite religious to begin with. Read more

Few U.S. adults say they’ve been
diagnosed with coronavirus, but more
than a quarter know someone who has

April 30, 2020 | Pew Research Center

Few Americans have been diagnosed with COVID-19 themselves, but many more say they know someone with a positive diagnosis. More than one-in-four U.S. adults (28%) say they personally know someone who has been diagnosed by a health care provider as having COVID-19. A smaller share of Americans (20%) say they know someone who has been hospitalized or who has died as a result of having the coronavirus.

One aspect of personal risk for exposure to the coronavirus is whether someone is employed in a setting where they must have frequent contact with other people, such as at a grocery store, hospital or construction site. Given the potential for the spread of the coronavirus within households, risk to individuals is also higher if other members of the household are employed in similar settings. Read more

Experiences with the COVID-19
outbreak can vary for Americans of
different ages

June 16, 2020 | Pew Research Center

The COVID-19 outbreak has altered daily life for Americans – from how they work and attend school, to the ways they connect with others, to how they worship. These experiences can vary with age, as these findings from Pew Research Center surveys illustrate. Read more

The Post-COVID Future of
Everything: Jim Mellon
interviewed on The Big Middle
Podcast

June 15, 2020

Covid has changed our way of living forever. This insightful chat with Susan Flory looks ahead on how longevity, biotech and politics will influence us all. How has this crisis affected inequality, capitalism and climate in a meaningful way? How will careers keep up with technology? How will we avoid another pandemic through health resilience (*hint* sugar is poison) while making investments that are beneficial for humankind? Listen

Inequality is a public health crisis

June 15, 2020 | By Carol Hymowitz

At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, government and public health officials thought the virus would strike people equally, regardless of their wealth, power or race. Just the opposite has occurred. In the U.S., those hardest hit by Covid-19 are minorities and immigrants who were already hurting because of racial discrimination and unequal access to healthcare, housing, jobs and financial security.

The overriding lesson of the pandemic is that inequality is a public health crisis. Read more

The Pandemic Has
Accelerated The Need To
Close The Digital Divide For
Older Adults

June 3, 2020 | By Susan Nash

The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into stark relief two already disturbing trends from the last couple of decades. First, as the population ages, many older adults find themselves socially isolated, often with life-threatening consequences. Second, older adults have lagged behind the rest of the population in having the means and ability to access the Internet. The convergence of these two issues, each bad enough pre-pandemic, has created a situation where many older adults who comply with the shelter-in-place orders may find themselves completely shut off from the rest of the world. Read more

Out with the old:
Coronavirus highlights why
we need new names for
aging

May 6, 2020 | The Conversation

Although largely unnoticed by mainstream media, something significant has happened with the rise of COVID-19: the marginalization of older Americans. Scorn for elders is now on full display. Some blame them for the shelter-in-place guidelines. Some even say they should be offered up as a sacrifice for the good of the country.

But the coronavirus affects everyone. It’s true that hospitalization and mortality rates increase with age, but a March report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows young adults take up more ICU beds than the very old. This may evolve as the pandemic ensues. However, it highlights the potential issues in ageist assumptions. So why portray only older adults as vulnerable? Read more

Amid the Coronavirus Crisis,
A Regimen for Reentry

May 13, 2020 | Atul Gawande in The New Yorker

In places around the world, lockdowns are lifting to various degrees—often prematurely. Experts have identified a few indicators that must be met to begin opening nonessential businesses safely: rates of new cases should be low and falling for at least two weeks; hospitals should be able to treat all coronavirus patients in need; and there should be a capacity to test everyone with symptoms. But then what? What are the rules for reëntry? Is there any place that has figured out a way to open and have employees work safely, with one another and with their customers? Read more

A Conversation with Bill
Reichman on Elder Care
Technology and Innovation
in the COVID-19 Pandemic
and Beyond

May 28, 2020 | By The Gerontology Institute

Gerontology Institute director Len Fishman discusses the future of eldercare technology with William E. Reichman is a physician and chief executive of Baycrest, a leading non-profit elder care organization comprising health care and housing facilities, outpatient services and a research center on one campus in Toronto.

They about ways Baycrest has deployed technology to manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and how those innovations can permanently influence elder care practice. Read more

Let’s Make This Crisis the
(Grand)Mother of Invention

May 20, 2020 | By Marc Freedman, Carol Larson, and Trent Stamp

“Stay home, stay safe.” When it comes to the heightened vulnerability of America’s elders in the face of Covid-19, these are often wise words. But the unwritten injunction might as well be “Stay home, stay safe, and stay out of the way.”

Report after report has described the rise of ageism over the past months, but just as worrisome is the insidious implication that older people are exclusively the objects of service, helpless not helpers, anything but essential.

What a contrast to the thousands of older doctors, nurses, and health care workers who are working the front lines, many of them coming out of retirement to do so. And then there’s the nearly 80-year-old Dr. Anthony Fauci, a bastion of steadiness and clarity throughout the fight. Reminders, all of them, of older adults’ vast reservoir of experience and how desperately it’s needed today. Read more

Air pollutant emissions have
decreased drastically across
the world due to worldwide
lockdowns

May 27, 2020 | New Map of Life Environmental Fellow, Chenghao Wang

New Map of Life Environmental Fellow, Chenghao Wang, discusses the rapid improvements in air quality and reduction in pollutants since the lockdown began, but warns that these changes could easily be reversed if we don’t change the ways in which we live our lives. Read more

OPINION: Senior Housing
Needs to Serve Residents Better

May 26, 2020 | By Mary Ann Sternberg in Next Avenue

Ron, my significant other of 25 years, is a retired psychologist with Parkinson’s Disease. He lives in a small apartment in the assisted living section of the best continuing care community in the city, having moved there from independent living in October. He had begun to require more physical services but remained engaged in life and mentally alert. When the coronavirus began to invade south Louisiana, however, Ron’s assisted-living facility responded with a reaction that I would call extreme and absolute, no doubt derived from a fear of contagion and a concern for their own liability. They effectively closed down the campus. But they hadn’t prepared for what that would mean to Ron and others like him. Read more

No One Knows What’s Going to
Happen

May 22, 2020 | By Mark Lilla in The New York Times

The best prophet, Thomas Hobbes once wrote, is the best guesser. That would seem to be the last word on our capacity to predict the future: We can’t. But it is a truth humans have never been able to accept. People facing immediate danger want to hear an authoritative voice they can draw assurance from; they want to be told what will occur, how they should prepare, and that all will be well. We are not well designed, it seems, to live in uncertainty. Read more

The Pandemic Paradox for Older
Workers

May 19, 2020 | By Richard Eisenberg in Next Avenue

Americans of all ages are feeling the devastating economic impacts of the coronavirus outbreak. But older workers in their 50s and 60s — especially women — have been among the hardest hit. Based on recent studies and views of retirement and aging experts, this much is clear: The whacks older workers have felt to their jobs and retirement savings may have long-lasting, painful financial implications for many of them. Read more

The Coming Disruption

May 11, 2020 | By James D. Walsh in New York magazine

In 2017, Scott Galloway anticipated Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods a month before it was announced. Last year, he called WeWork on its “seriously loco” $47 billion valuation a month before the company’s IPO imploded. Now, Galloway, a Silicon Valley runaway who teaches marketing at NYU Stern School of Business, believes the pandemic has greased the wheels for big tech’s entrée into higher education. Read more

Opinion: The End of Meat Is
Here

May 21, 2020 | By Jonathan Safran Foer in The New York Times

Is any panic more primitive than the one prompted by the thought of empty grocery store shelves? Is any relief more primitive than the one provided by comfort food?

Most everyone has been doing more cooking these days, more documenting of the cooking, and more thinking about food in general. The combination of meat shortages and President Trump’s decision to order slaughterhouses open despite the protestations of endangered workers has inspired many Americans to consider just how essential meat is. Read more

How the Pandemic Is Changing Shopping

May 21, 2020 | The Washington Post

Across the country, stores are reopening to a changed reality. Retailers that have spent years trying to get customers to linger, in hopes they’ll buy more than they need, are reimagining their stores for a grab-and-go future filled with deliberate purchases. Gone, they say, are the days of trying on makeup or playing with toys in the aisles. The focus now is on making shopping faster, easier and safer to accommodate long-term shifts in consumer expectations and habits. Read more

A Commencement Address Too
Honest to Deliver in Person

May 18, 2020 | David Brooks in the Atlantic

Editor's Note: This article is part of a series of commencement addresses commissioned by The Atlantic for students who will not be able to attend their graduations because of the pandemic. Find the collection here.

I couldn’t say these things during a traditional ceremony, but these aren’t traditional times.

You bastards stood me up! You invited me to give this commencement address months ago. You never told me it was canceled. So I drove across the country, got up early this morning, put this scratchy graduation gown over my Ramones T-shirt, and now I find myself standing in an empty stadium with a Very Important Speech in my hands! Read more

How Cities Thrive Post-Covid:
Building Communities People Want
to Live In

May 20, 2020 | Knight Foundation press release

Cities face an uncertain future in the wake of Covid-19. Some predict a new wave of urban flight as public health, employment and affordability challenges intersect with an upsurge in remote work and connectivity that allows for more mobility. A recent Harris poll revealed that 39% of city-dwellers are currently considering moving to a less dense community. Others say the crisis will spur a reimagination of social infrastructure and urban life together as innovative leaders start to look ahead, become more nimble and revisit city plans to build back better, more resilient communities. As the pandemic causes us to evaluate where and how we live, understanding what connects people to place is more important than ever. But what exactly generates a real attachment to the community over the long term? What provides the stickiness or emotional and practical commitment to stay rooted in a community over time? A landmark Knight Foundation report produced by Urban Institute surveyed over 11,000 Americans to explore this very topic, developing a rich and authoritative dataset on what drives community attachment across a diverse set of metro areas and demographic groups. Read more

‘Building Back Better’ – Here’s
How We Can Navigate the
Risks We Face After COVID-19

May 20, 2020 | World Economic Forum

A new World Economic Forum report looks at the risks, challenges and opportunities the world is facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A prolonged global recession tops the list of most feared risks, replacing long-term risks like climate change as key business threats.

As a perfect storm of health and economic crises leaves the world navigating uncertain times, a new report casts light on what lies ahead. The World Economic Forum’s COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and Its Implications looks at what the coronavirus pandemic means for the world based on the views and analysis of 350 senior risk professionals.Read more

Families Can Be Less Frenzied

May 20, 2020 | Kerry Grannis

Post-pandemic, will we be able to preserve some of the slower pace we’re currently enjoying, or will we quickly return the old frenzy? My family is fortunate enough to live in an area with access to a multitude of activities that speak to our three teenagers’ varied interests, and to have the resources to afford many of them. But since March: no extracurriculars, no lessons, no practices, no recitals, no games or meets. While staying home for several months has had its challenges, the sudden absence of these enrichment activities has been…enriching. Read more

‘Age Is a Sloppy Proxy’: Older
Adults Push Back on Idea
That Staying Safe From
Coronavirus Means Staying
Isolated

May 19, 2020 | San Francisco Chronicle

Ever since the novel coronavirus began to spread widely in the United States, there’s been a lot of talk about grandma and grandpa. But, as many cities and states move to reopen, experts and older adults say age shouldn’t be the only consideration when deciding who leaves home or returns to work. The broad range of “65 years and older” doesn’t differentiate between those who are healthy and fully self-sufficient and the very vulnerable — those with pre-existing conditions and those who live or work in group housing situations. Moreover, it exacerbates existing tensions between generations: OK Boomer vs. Avocado Toaster. Read more

Opinion: A Lesson From the
AIDS Crisis for Dealing With
COVID-19

May 20, 2020 | By Ruth Finkelstein in City Limits

A new disease is cropping up in clusters around the world and rapidly killing thousands. It’s contagious, but affects different groups of people differently. Cities are especially hard hit. In the U.S., the federal government fumbles badly; at first denying the severity of the pandemic, then dithering on its response, and failing to heed the recommendations of public health experts or to invest resources wisely. Sound familiar? For those who remember the early days of HIV/AIDS, today’s crisis has an eerie echo. Despite important epidemiological differences between COVID-19 and HIV, lessons learned and strategies developed during the HIV epidemic can help us develop policies to combat COVID-19. Read more

Covid-19 Offers a Chance to
Build a Better World.
We Must Seize It.

May 17, 2020 | By Jamie Metzl in CNN

The coronavirus alone didn't itself break our world. It just exposed a world that was already breaking. With our health infrastructures, economies, governments and global power structures collapsing and with billions of people around the world, including the most vulnerable, at risk, we find ourselves at a transitional moment for our planet. The last time we experienced something like this was in the early years of World War II. When our world collapsed in the 1930s and '40s, however, we had leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill putting forward a vision of the better world they hoped to build when the war was won. Our best strategy was to follow them to victory. In the absence of equivalent leadership today, regular people from across the globe must come together to lead ourselves out of the current darkness. This process must begin with an honest understanding of the core problem we are facing.Read more

Future and Current Fiscal Policy

May 12, 2020 | By William Gale

The COVID-19 crisis has wreaked havoc on government budgets – in this country, in the states, and in nations around the world. But there is a potential silver lining. Read more

Physical Reality Still Matters

May 13, 2020 | By Bill McKibben

Many of us have lived lives that seemed to grow slowly more detached from the physical world--screens took up more and more of our time. There's no silver lining to the pandemic, but it can teach us some lessons, and maybe the most crucial is: physical reality still matters. Because I work on climate change I've spent the last three decades trying to convince people that physics and chemistry can't be argued with, forced to compromise, made to negotiate. The COVID microbe is doing the same thing for biology: lecture it all you want, but it pays no attention. If it says you have to stand six feet apart, that's what you best do. So we're getting a useful reminder that, much as we might wish to think otherwise, we don't really live in a 'post-modern' world--reality still sets the ground rules. If we learn that lesson--which almost all humans in almost all of human history understood in their bones--then we'll have a better chance at making the century ahead of us work out.

Bill McKibben is Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College

After the Pandemic

May 12, 2020 | A poem by Naomi Karp

Read "After the Pandemic"

Fearful of COVID-19, Older People
Are Changing Their Living Wills

May 9, 2020 | The Washington Post

In the context of COVID-19, many older adults are finding that their preferences about life-sustaining treatment are more clear or have changed. Experiencing the pandemic may spur more older adults to create advance directives for health care now and in the future. But challenges remain: we still have large gaps in medical knowledge, and uncertainties persist about how any one of us will fare with a given treatment such as a ventilator. Read more

How the Virus May Change Your Next
Home

May 12, 2020 | By Tim McKeough, The New York Times

Designers and architects expect the pandemic to affect apartment design long after the lockdowns are over. Here are a few trends you’re likely to see. Read more

A Powerful Case for Smaller
Nursing Homes

May 12, 2020 | By Jane Margolies, The New York Times

Shortages of safety gear and staff. Workers who may inadvertently be carriers. A disease that preys on older people with underlying health conditions. There are many reasons the coronavirus has hit nursing homes so hard. Advocates are challenging layouts that are efficient and cost effective but that may allow the coronavirus to spread faster.

Add the design of the buildings to the list. Advocates are challenging layouts that are efficient and cost effective but that may allow the coronavirus to spread faster. Read more

From Farms to Foodbanks

May 6, 2020 | Haverford College

Journalist David Wessel continues Haverford College's "Fords on the Front Lines" video series with a conversation with John Botti who, along with a group of friends, has mobilized getting food from farms to food banks. Watch video

For Renaissance Italians, combating
black plague was as much about
politics as it was science, according
to Stanford scholar

March 12, 2020 | By Melissa DeWitte, Stanford News

The inability of 14th-century medicine to stop the plague from destroying societies throughout Europe and Asia helped advance scientific discovery and transformed politics and health policy, says Stanford historian Paula Findlen. Read more

Family Get Together

May 11, 2020 | By Karen Gershowitz

My family, like many in America, is spread out across the country. We talk regularly, but mostly one-on-one. Getting everyone together at the same time, in the same place has been a scheduling nightmare. That has changed since Covid-19 has taken over our lives. Read more

"The Doctor Will FaceTime You
Now"

May 11, 2020 | By Jane Brody, The New York Times

Even if no other good for health care emerges from the coronavirus crisis, one development — the incorporation of telemedicine into routine medical care — promises to be transformative. Using technology that already exists and devices that most people have in their homes, medical practice over the internet can result in faster diagnoses and treatments, increase the efficiency of care and reduce patient stress. Read more

Intergenerational Relationships Can
Happen Online

May 13, 2020 | By Sasha Johfre

The physical distancing that we have all been experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people around the world to be more creative about the way they connect with others. The benefit of this forced creativity is that it has allowed people to jump out of the ruts of social engagement as we previously knew it. Read more

Bolero Juilliard

April 30, 2020

"What can we do together even while we are alone?" With 100+ Juilliard students and alumni, at home together.

Sedentary Behavior and the Pandemic

May 13, 2020 | By Megan Roche

I’m an epidemiologist in progress, a physician, and a running coach for athletes ranging from run/walkers to people who run 100-mile races both professionally and for “fun.” Online run coaching, which works out to about 20% run coaching and 80% life journaling, provides an interesting insight into the lives of a geographically diverse group of people. As COVID-19 became a reality this year, athletes started expressing similar sentiments in their training logs. It was an unprecedented moment as a coach. It was the first time I’d seen all of my athletes grapple with a common experience. Read more

Telemedicine and the Digital Divide

April 28, 2020 | By Andrea Jonas

The effects of COVID-19 have been far-reaching, changing the way that American communities continue to provide essential services such as education and healthcare. As increasing outpatient medical services are transitioned to telehealth, new opportunities and challenges arise in caring for an aging U.S. population. The introduction and widespread uptake of telemedicine has been largely a positive transformation across the healthcare system, allowing for increased access to medical care for a homebound population. As with any new technology, however, there remains the possibility for introduction of new biases and discrepancies in access: older patients, those without in-home internet access, or those without smart devices such as laptops and iphones may not enjoy the same access to care. As our healthcare system reinvents itself in the post-COVID era, we must be responsible stewards of how innovations such as telemedicine are built into our healthcare systems to as to maximize equitable access to healthcare services for all.

Evidence and Ideas for Change

May 1, 2020 | Urban Institute

Urban Institute President Sarah Rosen Wartell’s reflections on pressing issues of the day and the latest research insights that can help changemakers advance equity, opportunity, and upward mobility. Read more

Financial Security

April 21, 2020 | By Arthur Sung

The pandemic reveals the socio-economic class divide is front and center. The poor get sicker and with the highest death burden; the lowest totem pole front line workers get furloughed while the elite executive controls the cash flow. How do we as a society confront the concept of wealth vs the perception of caring for one another; when is the culture of seeking enduring power balanced against the notion of giving without regard to be recognized. Society has become theatrical and one would hope true altruism can find its bearings again in our lifetime.

The Timeline on Technology
Adoption Has Just Been Advanced

March 19, 2020 | By Ken Smith

In the past decade, we have witnessed a dramatic leap forward in digital technology, but it is questionable whether our day to day lives have changed in proportion. Many of the activities of daily life – school, shopping, socializing, exercising, commuting, working – have only changed incrementally. The COVID-19 virus and societies’ response may be changing that in a hurry. Read more

Social Distancing Redux

April 27, 2020 | By Ann Bennett Spence

My mother, who died 25 years ago, was Chinese. One of the things she taught me from the first was a variation on what we’re now calling social distancing: having and keeping one’s own personal space. Read more

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The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the various authors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Stanford Center on Longevity or official policies of the Stanford Center on Longevity.