Category — Care Giving

Keiro Senior HealthCare is the largest not-for-profit healthcare organization serving the Japanese American community. Keiro Senior HealthCare encompasses Keiro Nursing Home, South Bay Keiro Nursing Home, Keiro Intermediate Care Facility, and Keiro Retirement Home. It also promotes healthy lifestyles – what they call “genki living” – through The Institute for Healthy Aging at Keiro.

For this week’s show, The Business of… Assistive Listening Devices for Older Consumers, we have guest Michele Ahlman, President of ClearSounds Communications, a Chicago-based privately held company that provides high-quality sound enhancing products for the boomer, senior and caregivers market. As a leading provider of niche telephone and communication products, ClearSounds is the leading manufacturer and distributor of ClearSounds branded products including amplified phones, signaling devices, TV listening systems, clocks, audio accessories and cellular products.

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So much has changed since our last issue of C2! The one constant is that the economic outlook continues to provoke anxiety. Older adults appear to be faring better in some respects than younger generations, though our studies show they continue to live under a cloud of worry. Many are expressing this as the loss of the American dream for younger generations, particularly their children and grandchildren.

Continuum Crew has experienced positive growth as the mature consumer market continues to be able to spend on a number of products and services for themselves and their extended families. In fact, a new MetLife Report on American Grandparents (July 2011) notes that households led by those aged 55 to 64 increased their non-health related spending by an average of $11,700 over the past ten years, when their household income rose just $1,200. Further, in the same ten-year period 55- to 64-year-olds spent $7.6 billion on baby food, infant equipment and clothing, toys, games, and tricycles – a 71% increase. Household spending for the 25- to 44-year-old households with children present saw a far smaller rate of increase indicating that baby boomer grandparents are helping in all new ways. (Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys).

It has never been more important to listen carefully to consumers to understand what they want from products and services, and how they want to be engaged. Continuum Crew launched Crew Media earlier this year to purchase Eons.com – the only baby boomer social network. Founded in 2006 by Jeff Taylor, also founder of Monster.com, Eons has more than 800,000 members who have started more than 1,700 groups focused on their passions and interests. Learn more about it from community manager Ri Regina on page 13.

Also under the Crew Media banner is our partnership with GRAND – the digital magazine for the grandparenting lifestage. As a first-time grandmother to baby Gabriel McClain, I am proud to be GRAND’s new publisher.

Another initiative we launched this past spring is Move Beyond Age, a coalition of individuals and companies who are committed to making smart design a quality of life issue. We are encouraging companies to design better products and services for older consumers, which in turn create better experiences for every generation. Take a look at Jeffrey DeMure’s article on the Bookend Markets, Bill Yates on GreatCall, and Stephen Winner on the Silverado Story, for examples of companies and thought leaders who understand the importance of designing smart products and services.

Also new to Continuum Crew is The Business of Aging radio show on WeEarth Global Radio Network – WGRN. The show is also available here on our blog and on iTunes. In this issue we share our first show of the season, an interview with Patricia Lippe Davis from AARP Media Sales on her view of the mature consumer marketplace. We are currently in our second season and hope you will join our listenership as we talk about successful strategies for engaging consumers over 40.

With that, I am pleased to present to you our latest issue of 
C2 magazine, Issue 27, Autumn 2011

Available for download here.

Thank you for your continued enthusiasm for our market and our work here at Continuum Crew!

Lori Bitter,
Editor-in-Chief, C2 magazine

The recently released MetLife Report on American Grandparents revealed that 1 in 10 households is headed by a grandparent with at least one grandchild living there. The study reports that part of the reason for this is high rates of unemployment among the children’s parents. Interestingly, in 1980 there were only 28 million Americans living in a household that included two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation. By 2008 the number was 49 million Americans living inter-generationally.

In a recent New York Times story about this trend, Kermit Baker, a senior fellow at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard and the chief economist of the American Institute of Architects, said, “Immigrants are a source of growing demand (for intergenerational homes), and their household composition is different in fundamental ways from the domestic-born.”

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Continuum Crew is proud to announce we are working with ClearSounds!

ClearSounds, along with its founding company, HITEC Group, is a small, women-owned business that has served the needs of people with hearing & vision loss with simple, cost effective solutions for almost 30 years. ClearSounds Communications is the leading manufacturer of cutting-edge assistive listening devices and amplified communication products for individuals experiencing mild-to-moderate hearing loss, which include corded & cordless phones, bluetooth headsets, neckloops, signalers, clocks & TV listeners.

Ohio Presbyterian Retirement Service (OPRS) operates a network of continuing care retirement communities in Ohio. The company offers services through about a dozen senior living communities across the state and serves some 6,000 residents. The centers include skilled nursing, assisted living, and independent living residences. Through its Senior Independence program, the not-for-profit organization also provides independent-living services to about 75,000 seniors in Ohio, including adult day care, home health, hospice, and community health clinics. OPRS was established in 1922. Continuum Crew will help OPRS with its Boomer Task Force.

We have just completed our first block of episodes for The Business of Aging on WGRN (WeEarth Global Radio Network) and I wanted to say “Thank you” to all my guests, the team: Allan, Kat, Nick and Judy, and my Continuum Crew team. These last couple of months have enabled me to get back to my radio roots (so much fun!) and have some of the most insightful and inspiring conversations around the implications to businesses of an aging population.

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The thirteenth show, The Business of…Senior Living & Memory Care, we have guest Stephen Winner, co-founder of Silverado Senior Living and their “chief culture officer”, and co-author of the Silverado Story – a beautiful book about what he and his co-founders have created for people with Alzheimers and other memory impairments.

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I hope you’ll join me at the California Assisted Living Association’s (CALA) Spring Conference this Tuesday, June 7 in Santa Clara, where I will be speaking in the session Reaching the New Assisted Living Decision Maker.

Date: June 7
Time: 3:45 – 5:15 p.m.
Where: Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara, CA

This session will provide key strategies to effectively communicate with strong influencers in the decision making process – the adult children/caregivers, integral to the selection and sales process. Learn how understanding the values of decision makers and trends and differences in sentiment towards Assisted Living communities can help drive your marketing strategy. Discover a messaging framework needed to engage and increase your prospect base.

The sixth show The Business of … Livable Design looks at the opportunity in creating smart home design to assist aging in place. Called ‘livable design’ it is housing design with the future in mind.

My guest is Erin Clay. Erin is Director of Research and Planning at Eskaton, a nonprofit aging services organization providing community living and home-based support for older adults in Northern California for more than 40 years. Erin joined Eskaton in 2008 and managed the National Demonstration Home project ground breaking to its completion. She is a Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist through the National Association of Home Builders and is leading Eskaton’s Livable Design movement, which is aimed at enhancing the home environment for all generations through beautiful, flexible, and inclusive design. Erin has presented at building and aging conferences around the nation, speaks to architectural firms, and has been a guest speaker in the gerontology program at California State University.