About Liz Seegert
Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.
The latest annual report on America’s seniors finds older adults showed improvement on clinical measures like access to quality health care and preventive services, especially flu vaccination rates. But these improvements are tempered with some serious challenges: those over 65 also had several worsening behavioral health outcomes, including increases in drug deaths, suicides and frequent mental distress.
And, despite successes in certain clinical measures, health improvements for older adults were not felt equally across the country. For example, populations in rural states and certain racial and ethnic groups faced more significant hurdles than their urban, white counterparts, according to America’s Health Rankings, who published the analysis in May. (Don’t miss our AHCJ panel on rural aging on Wednesday, June 23, 2021, at 12:10 pm ET. Continue reading →
Liz Seegert is an independent health journalist based in New York’s Hudson Valley, who writes about caregiving, dementia, access to care, nursing homes and policy in her role as AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Aging. Seegert helps provide context for reporting on this multidimensional issue with story posts, tip sheets, analysis, data and one-on-one interviews with aging experts.