Inside The Senior Alliance: National Poll on Healthy Aging (Ep 49)

In this episode, Emma Case, Planning and Advocacy Specialist at The Senior Alliance, talks to Erica Solway, Deputy Director for the National Poll on Aging at The University of Michigan’s Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation or IHPI. They discuss the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging, which is an initiative by the Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation (IHPI) that focuses on understanding health-related issues affecting Americans aged 50-80. Emma and Erica talk about the history of these polls, their purpose, how is this data used once it’s collected, the topics of the polls and the needs being discovered, and the challenges that are being uncovered. We also find out about a recent poll on caregivers and what the data revealed, and what areas need to be addressed. Great information! www.thesenioralliance.org. Produced by The Senior Alliance and Blazing Kiss Media.

Emma Case (00:00):
Welcome to Inside The Senior Alliance, a podcast exploring resources and issues in the field of aging. I’m Emma Case, Planning and Advocacy Specialist at The Senior Alliance Area Agency on Aging serving Western and Southern Wayne County. Joining me today is Erica Solway, Deputy Director for the National Poll on Aging. Erica, thank you for joining me today.

Erica Solway (00:17):
Thanks so much for having me Emma.

Emma Case (00:19):
The University of Michigan’s National Poll on Aging is an initiative by the Institute for Healthcare and Policy and Innovation, or IHPI that focuses on understanding health related issues affecting Americans age 50 to 80. In May, you began the Michigan Poll on Aging, which specifically focuses on Michiganders age 50 and older. Erica, what’s the history behind these polls? What’s there purpose and how is this data used once it’s collected?

Erica Solway (00:45):
The National Poll on Healthy Aging actually started in 2017, so has been around for several years at this point, and was developed with the goal of tapping into the perspectives of older adults to inform the public healthcare providers, policy makers, and advocates on issues that relate to healthcare and health policy for this population of older adults and their families. It was just recently in May of 2024 that we launched the Michigan Poll on Healthy Aging with support from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund and the Michigan Health Endowment Fund recognized that we were providing really interesting data from our national poll that could help inform aging leaders across the country. But often we’re hearing, you know, how does this apply to us here in Michigan? What do we know about older adults perspectives here in our state? And so we have created an over sample of adults in Michigan that we then poll with the same questions as we do with our national sample and we can actually look at what people are saying here in Michigan and compare those to the responses we see in the rest of the country.

Erica Solway (01:47):
Once our data’s collected, we develop reports intended to reach a variety of audiences. These reports are developed about eight to ten times per year. We also have a format called a Poll Extra, where we take timely poll data and turn that into easy to read, timely articles that we release on a semi-regular basis. And then we also use our data from the polls to develop academic papers. Those go into peer reviewed publications and reach again another audience of researchers. We have been doing more to make our data publicly available for the use by the public, including most recently with our Michigan data. We actually have started to create interactive data dashboards where we’re able to showcase the Michigan findings and the comparison to the national findings.

Emma Case (02:33):
What kinds of topics have the polls and the poll reports and the poll extras covered so far?

Erica Solway (02:37):
We have covered a wide range of topics over the past seven plus years with our national poll. Anything from drug costs to aging in place to oral health and mental health, ageism, loneliness, technology use, we’ve really covered a wide range of topics relevant to healthy aging. Our most recent reports, reflecting back on the past couple months, have been on top health concerns, financial strain, and cannabis use. And for all three of those topics, we had Michigan reports focused on the same area. And again, for those we were able to make comparisons between what we were seeing in Michigan and our national findings.

Emma Case (03:14):
In Michigan, there’s a rising number of older adults, one in four Michigan residents are estimated to be over the age of 60 by 2030. With this comes a rise in needs and challenges that they face. What are the trends you’ve noticed regarding the needs of older adults in the data of these polls?

Erica Solway (03:29):
There have been some areas, specific topics where we’ve actually explored trends over time, and I can speak to those. When we’ve looked at trends over time in specific areas, one of those areas of focus has been around loneliness. And what we noticed back well before the pandemic began was that loneliness was very common among older adults. And of course when the pandemic hit and opportunities for social connection were more limited, we saw a huge spike in people saying that they were, that they were feeling a lack of companionship or feeling isolated from others. And many people reporting that they were not having regular contact with people from outside their household. And we’ve continued to follow that trend over time, looking at how feelings of loneliness have changed over time. And what we’ve seen is they have declined from that peak and early in the pandemic, but we are still seeing very high rates of loneliness.

Erica Solway (04:18):
So it’s just one of those topics where, you know, people may be feeling it, they may be experiencing it themselves or know others who are, but may feel alone in feeling that way. And our poll results suggest that it’s a pretty pervasive issue and something that needs to be taken very seriously. We’ve also looked over time at other experiences that older adults might have, such as the use of telehealth and how that’s changed over recent years. Looking at use of telehealth and people’s concerns and the opportunities it offers. We’ve also looked at things like patient portal use and how that’s changed over time. So that’s one of the ways we’re able to understand some of the trends that we’re seeing in perspectives and experiences among older adults. I think in a more general sense, what we’re seeing is that a lot of people feel relatively confident that they’re prepared and understand what they need to do as it relates to aging, as healthfully as possible.

Erica Solway (05:08):
But when you ask about more specific things that people are doing, there’s often a mismatch that we see between what probably would be recommended and what people are actually doing. And so, you know, some of that is about a lack of understanding or a lack of awareness of certain things or just life gets really, really complicated. And sometimes people don’t necessarily think about what they might need to age in place or age in the way that they hope to until something happens where they start to have to take their health very seriously. One of the other things we’ve seen of course is you know, I mentioned that we had a recent report on financial strain. Challenges related to finances or resources do exist for many people. And so taking that into account and thinking about how we might be able to address some of the various social determinants of health that we know impact people, especially as they grow older. And we’re trying to find ways that we can help people understand, again, that these experiences are common, help raise awareness about what older adults think about these areas and help ideally find opportunities to help improve or support people as they continue to age.

Emma Case (06:13):
Have there been any surprising or shocking results so far that you’ve found?

Erica Solway (06:17):
You know, we always find surprising nuggets in every topic that we explore. I think that’s definitely true. We try and cover topics where there isn’t a lot of information or a lot of data available. For example, our most recent report from just September 2024 was focused on cannabis use among older adults. It probably comes as no surprise that cannabis use is somewhat common among older people, but especially, you know, actually even more so here in our state. But to actually be able to really kind of put numbers to the percentage of people 50 and older who are using cannabis products was something that I think was really helpful and really called attention to the fact that we should be thinking about older adult use and thinking about this as a population that we’re considering how they’re using cannabis, what it’s doing for them, what they say, are there reasons for use and are there alternative options that could be recommended to achieve those same effects? Because we found in our most recent poll that 12% of adults age 50 and older were using cannabis at least once a month in the past year. So again, we know it’s an issue, but something to once we’re able to quantify it a little bit, you start to think of there’s something more here that we should be talking about and exploring further.

Emma Case (07:27):
I want to talk about your recent poll on caregivers and what you found regarding Michigan residents. At The Senior Alliance we know that caregivers play an essential role in the lives of older adults. We know that caregiving can be rewarding but also incredibly challenging and that anyone can be a caregiver or may need a caregiver in their lifetime. What has your data revealed about caregiving and caregivers in general?

Erica Solway (07:48):
We have explored caregiving through a variety of different ways through the National Poll and Healthy Aging and also through our new Michigan Poll and Healthy Aging. One of the things, Emma, that probably is no surprise to you, is that caregiving is so common, but it’s hard sometimes to find a definition for caregiving that’s inclusive enough that includes people who may not self-identify as being caregivers. Through various polls, we’ve used different questions to try and better understand who is providing support to older people. We did a report a couple years ago where we described the people who were providing some support as as helpers, recognizing that some people are doing certain tasks that might be more time limited, but they might be doing them regularly, but it might not be something that they think about as being what would constitute being a caregiver versus people who are more intensively involved in the day-to-day activities of another person.

Erica Solway (08:38):
So back this summer we ran a poll where we looked at people who said that they take care of at least one person with a health condition or disability, and we found that 29% of Michiganders age 15 and older and 35% of women age 50 and older in our state said that they take care of at least one person with a health condition or disability. So we’re talking about close to or over a third of people, 50 and older in our state who are serving in the capacity of helping another person who has a health condition or disability. We also were able to look at who they’re taking care of. Nearly 70% took care of someone over age 65. So again, some of these were people, were adults, but many of them were older adults. About 20% take care of someone with an intellectual or developmental disability.

Erica Solway (09:26):
5% actually reported taking care of three or more people, which is notable and somewhat surprising. So often times caregivers are not just providing care to one person, but maybe providing care to multiple people, of course, may also be part of caring for children. In addition to caring for adults or older adults. We also found that Michigan caregivers were less likely than caregivers in other parts of the nation to say that they assist people with memory or thinking problems, which we know is an important part of the role of many caregivers to help those with dementia or other cognitive issues. We also asked about caregivers views on who should support caregivers, you know, whether that’s the government or the person receiving care or family members or friends. And we found that nearly half of people in Michigan said that government should play a role in covering the cost of caregiving for people 65 and older. One of the interesting polls we also released this summer was looking at awareness of aging resources through the AAA’s, through the SHIP program, you provide critical services and wanted to make sure that we were asking people how much are they aware of AAA’s? And we actually found that more than half of caregivers in Michigan were not familiar with AAA’s, suggesting that there might be an opportunity to do more to educate older adults across our state, including caregivers about the important resources that you provide.

Emma Case (10:49):
Yeah, it’s really interesting that you say that. We always say at The Senior Alliance, we’re kind of a best kept secret and we want to make sure we’re getting our outreach out there and letting older adults know about all of our services that we offer. Based on your recent findings, what are some areas of research that you think might need more attention moving forward?

Erica Solway (11:07):
I really appreciate this question, Emma, and it’s something we think about often, and I should note that we are always eager to hear from people. If you have topic ideas for us to explore through the poll, we have an email address healthyaging@umich.edu. You’re welcome to email us with any ideas for topics that might be unique or specific to our interests here in Michigan or for our national poll. We always are trying to look at the academic literature, looking to the news, looking to current events to think about where we might be able to make a unique contribution. What I do think is true is that we need more research and more data that’s really reflective of older adults’ perspectives and experiences and attitudes. We don’t turn to older adults enough to understand what their take on important issues are. We have a lot of policy makers, clinicians talking about what’s important, but to hear that directly from older adults is critical. And so I really encourage, one of the things that we think we’re doing quite well and what we hope to do more in the future is to continue to really think about how can we use the perspectives of older people to inform research policy and practice moving forward, and we hope others will be doing the same or consider using our publicly available data to do that and to shed light on these important issues.

Emma Case (12:22):
How can communities and our listeners use the data you talked about today to better support the needs and preferences of an aging population?

Erica Solway (12:30):
I think we really need to take time to understand the needs and preferences of older adults and caregivers and those who are living with older people, our communities. You know one of the things that we are doing very intentionally, as I mentioned, is making our data, especially our Michigan data publicly available through interactive data dashboards so that people can actually delve more deeply into what we’re finding so that community leaders, other stakeholders can actually use that information to think about how they can be creating programs or expanding programs that best meet the needs of the population. I do think it’s something that we’ve struggled with for a long time about understanding the needs and then taking that and putting it into action. There are lots of innovative programs that are out there that can and should be spread, but we really, you know, I think we really need to turn to older people themselves to hear what they see as the needs, what they see as the opportunities, and to really make sure that what we’re offering is reflective of what their experiences are.

Emma Case (13:29):
If our listeners want to know more about the polls we discussed today, where can they go to view that information and what polls and data can we look forward to seeing in the future?

Erica Solway (13:37):
People can come to our website. I encourage you to visit our website at healthyagingpoll.org. There you can see all of the reports. We’ve developed both the national reports. We now have 65 national reports that we’ve released since 2017. We also have our Michigan findings there as well. Most of those, again, are in article formats and really easy to read and digest. We have a spot on the top of our website where you can go to, if you want to join our email list, there’s a blue box on the top right corner of our website that says Email sign up. We’d be delighted if you want to sign up to receive our emails so that you can get reports as they’re released. And again, we do maintain an email address healthyaging@umich.edu where we receive topic ideas from people. I should note, we sometimes actually receive inquiries about participation in the poll.

Erica Solway (14:27):
And we, while we very much appreciate those, we use a reputable national vendor who helps us do the recruitment for these polls. And so we don’t actively recruit for participants, but we do welcome feedback on the polls that we’ve released and topic ideas that we should explore in the future. Next up is a national report that will focus on health literacy among adults 50 and older. I should note that one of the interesting developments, one of the things we’re very excited about is that our poll, you mentioned Emma, that we poll people 50 to 80. We now poll people over 80 as well. So it’s 50 and older, both in Michigan and in our national sample. And so we’re thinking about topics that take us through the end of the year and into 2025 that really take full advantage of understanding the experiences of the whole age range 50 and older. And so, you know, we’re really looking forward to the future. I think we’ve got so much still to cover, as much ground as we’ve been able to cover since 2017. We have a long list of topics that we’re excited to explore in the future.

Emma Case (15:27):
Erica, thanks for joining me today on this episode.

Erica Solway (15:29):
Thanks so much for having me, Emma. I really appreciate it.

Emma Case (15:31):
If you have any questions about services or programs that The Senior Alliance offers, you can call us at (734) 722-2830 or email us at info@thesenioralliance.org. Information about our agency or the programs and services we offer can be found on our website at www.thesenioralliance.org. On Facebook, we can be located by searching for The Senior Alliance. Finally, our X, formerly known as Twitter handle is @AAA1C. I’m Emma Case. Thank you for listening to this episode of Inside The Senior Alliance.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Inside The Senior Alliance is a production of The Senior Alliance and Blazing Kiss Media.