Tag Archives: chronic disease

Examining the latest efforts in integrative health

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Photo: City of Santa Clarita via Flickr

In the face of sky-rocketing rates of chronic disease and addiction, some health care leaders are searching beyond pills and procedures for solutions to America’s health care crisis.

They are turning toward integrative health, a field that combines conventional Western medicine with self-care coaching and complementary therapies such as meditation and acupuncture.

“We do not have a chronic disease model that works. That is why we are in a crisis in health care,” said physician Wayne B. Jonas, speaking at the panel “Newest Efforts in Integrative Health” during Health Journalism 2018. Continue reading →

Mary Otto, a Washington, D.C.-based freelancer, is AHCJ's topic leader on oral health and the author of "Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America." She can be reached at mary@healthjournalism.org.

Research focuses on improving life as we extend it

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What happens to quality of life when science actually slows the aging process? That’s what the emerging field of geroscience is all about, according to an interdisciplinary panel of researchers at this year’s Gerontological Society of America Conference. Geroscience tackles biological factors of chronic diseases and aging itself as a risk factor for developing chronic diseases. It has numerous implications for extending healthy life span, enhancing quality of life in later years and impacting public policy surrounding aging and long-term care.

Or, as S. Jay Olshansky, Ph.D., professor at the school of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago calls it, the Longevity Dividend. “This is a very short way of saying we’re trying to find a way to extend the period of healthy life by going after all the things that go wrong with us as we grow older, which is to go after the biological process of aging itself.” Continue reading →

Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist and AHCJ’s topic leader on aging. She covers older adults, baby boomers, health policy, and social determinants of health, as well as many other health issues. Her bylines include stories for PBS/NextAvenue.org. the American Journal of Nursing, TIME Health, Medscape, Consumer Reports, and Medical Economics, as well as dozens of other trade and mainstream media. Her articles have been syndicated in Forbes.com, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant, the Saturday Evening Post and other major outlets.