Aging Can Be ‘Dangerous’ For Women – And For Their Female Caregivers

“Generally, every woman has said, ‘I don’t feel heard, I don’t hear,'” explained Kristen Helton, CEO and co-founder of Herself Health.

In the summer of 2022, Helton had left his previous position leading Amazon Care and knew he wanted to do “something meaningful” in women’s lives; alongside the investment firm Juxtapose, he founded Collaborative Aging, a primary care system for women aged 65 and over.

Before starting the company, Dr. Helton researched the future patients of his Life. They shared how they felt they were not listened to or listened to by their doctors, how their doctors dismissed them or did not believe them, and how they had to find the health system, including seeing therapist after therapist, myself. “Older women feel invisible – and that extends to health care,” Dr. Helton notices.

In fact, one survey reported that nearly 20% of Americans age 50 and older, regardless of gender, say they have experienced discrimination in their care. life, costing the health care system an estimated $63 billion a year. This aging can result in decreased quality of life, reduced survival rates, inadequate care, increased hospitalizations and emergency room visits, and adverse health outcomes for older patients – especially women. For example, more than 60% of people with joint pain are women, half of women (but only 33% of men) aged 50 and over have low bones: a precursor to osteoporosis, and 20% of women (compared to 4.4). % of men) aged 50 or older have osteoporosis.

However, only about 4% of health research and development focuses on women, leaving gaps in knowledge around these gender differences.

Malini Moraghan MBA realized this male dominance in health matters after her mother had a heart attack in 2021. Unknown to Mrs. Moraghan and her family, her mother he had already had several small silent heart attacks that had gone unnoticed and untreated. As Ms. Moraghan asked, “Why didn’t we have enough information to get ahead of this?”

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in women, killing one in three. But since only about 38% of cardiovascular trial participants are women, data about women and research is lacking — as is the care women need. In fact, women who complained of symptoms consistent with heart disease were twice as likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness than men who complained of the same symptoms. : an example of both age and gender that women over 65 may face. As Dr. Helton summed up, “It’s dangerous to be fired”.

This dismissal affects not only the patients in question but also their carers and “care managers” as Mrs Moraghan calls them – and women often do these jobs: either directly providing care or oversee it. When it comes to paid care, women make up 82% of domestic helpers and 75% of doctors and elder care professionals. Women also report twice as much unpaid caregiving as men. Put another way, women on average spend 153 more hours than men providing unpaid care each year at a cost of over $625 billion annually (no compared to more than $300 billion annually for men).

Or as Mrs Moraghan puts it, women – paid and unpaid – take “the lion’s share of problem solving” when it comes to aged care. He himself is another example. After her mother’s heart attack, her mother spent a month in the emergency room and attended a Medicare-covered facility and hospice before she died in November 2023. Moraghan has some experience in aged care; is the founder and managing director of the Torana Group which helps key employees share the humanity of the companies they manage, including in food and agriculture and senior living. When looking for a place for her mother, Ms. Moraghan knew to ask questions about employee turnover rates, injury rates, professional development opportunities, and more.

But she still had to manage bills from various care providers — including hospitals, equipment lenders, and Medicare, which continued to pay bills for up to six months after her mother died. let him pass. She had to research hospice services and programs and had to bring food home when she discovered the facility fed her vegetarian, diabetic mother a diet of pasta and potatoes. : starchy foods. He and his brother also spent an hour every Friday morning for a year trying to get Medicare documents.

When her mother went from the emergency room to the hospice, Mrs. Moraghan said, “I felt the fraud of American health care – no one was there to talk to you. , to guide you, or help you”. Dr. Helton noticed the same thing; for example, the average doctor’s appointment, across all ages of patients and men, is only 17.4 minutes. On the contrary, Her Health seeks to provide “more care and better care” as well as “more time and [healthcare providers] and more programming and reporting”.

Carers and care managers need an “advocate” too, shared Ms Moraghan. Shouldered alone, this burden is so strong that, by 2023, 1.9 million women in the United States over the age of 55 – seven times the number of men – were unemployed due to maintenance activities. Those caregivers who lose up to $320,000 in income and Social Security benefits must face, the mental and physical challenges of caring for a loved one, and after those loved ones pass, they must address any legal requirements, including paying any debts or selling the property. These postmortem features are part of the aging process, as Ms. Moraghan noted, but are often underappreciated.

And this responsibility may not diminish with age. Caregiving is one of the main reasons that Health care patients – all of whom are 65 or older – miss their appointments, which leads to other negative consequences for caregivers: that ” they give up their lives”, Dr. Helton explained.

This population, 65 and over, is set to double in size: from 49 million in 2016 to 95 million in 2060. UCI Health predicts that caring for these people will “middle of future health policies”. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization and the United Nations, have declared 2021 to 2030 the “Decade of Healthy Aging” and want to use these years to reduce ageism and change “how we how to think, feel and act about aging and aging.”

Ms Moraghan believes local businesses, communities and organizations can help provide “high-quality, permanent carers” for older people. She and her sister also received support and resources — including counseling, grief education, and workshops — through her mother’s hospice program. Dr. Helton advocates for collaboration between government, hospital and health care systems, and startups, like His Life, to improve the health and quality of life of those who need care, delivery of care, or managed care. . He concluded, “I want to be on the right side of health history.”