Award-Winning Health Journalism

Getting Answers

An adult son asks his father tough questions about planning future care

Tough questions about care, health, and the future to ask your aging parents  Fact checked by Shannon Sparks Money. Physical health. Cognitive decline. Death. Between adult children and their aging parents, few topics are as emotionally charged — or as essential to discuss. The challenge, however, is that these talks can easily go off track […]

Anxiously Aging

Aging man looking concerned

Feeling vulnerable comes with getting older, but it doesn’t have to define this time of life Dwayne Dobschuetz calls it “the game-changer” — the broken hip, stroke, or loss of a driver’s license that suddenly damages a senior’s independence. The Northwestern Medicine geriatrics nurse, 75 years old himself, says catastrophic events are often behind dramatic […]

Keep a Hospital Go-Bag at the Ready

Man packing suitcase for hospital stay

No one wants to end up in the hospital. But each year in the United States, adults 65 and older have about 13.2 million hospitalizations, according to a 2021 report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. A sudden hospital visit can be stressful. One of the easiest ways to prepare is to have […]

Finding Funds

Nurse and patient in hospital

Look outside the box to pay for long-term care Ask someone about their ideal living situation in their golden years, and they’ll likely say they hope to live a healthy, independent life into their 90s.  In many cases, though, that’s not the reality. An estimated 17% of adults age 75 to 84 and 42% of adults […]

Deciding Directives

Deciding Directives

Why end-of-life planning is essential for you and your loved ones Kim Placentino loved Luigi “Louie” Caringello like a father. Placentino’s father had died when she was 2 months old, so Caringello, a longtime family friend, took on that role in her life. When Caringello fell ill with congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary […]