AARP challenges North Carolina and nation to "disrupt aging" at White House Conference

Over 40 North Carolina health care, community leaders and volunteers watched AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins when she joined President Barack Obama and hundreds of leaders focused on aging policy at the White House Conference on Aging (WHCOA) .

The White House Conference on Aging has been held once a decade, beginning in 1961 and is designed to help chart the course of aging policy.  The 2015 Conference focused on four areas:  ensuring retirement security; promoting healthy aging; providing long-term services and supports; and protecting older Americans from financial exploitation, abuse, and neglect. Earlier this year AARP cosponsored and co-planned with the Leadership Council of Aging Organizations (LCAO), a series of WHCOA regional forums throughout the nation to engage with older Americans, their families, caregivers, leaders in the aging field, and others on the key issues affecting older Americans.

AARP North Carolina Director Doug Dickerson, who watched the Conference on a live video feed said, "AARP is working at the local, state and national level to both recognize the value and meet the needs of older Americans. North Carolina leaders and citizen activists will play a large role in raising awareness and proposing policy solutions to help people age with dignity and purpose."

Below are excerpts from AARP CEO Jo Ann Jenkins’ prepared remarks from the White House:

“If we leave here only addressing the problems without clearly seeing the benefits of longevity—the value of hiring an experienced worker, the solutions that an inter-generational workforce brings, the important social contributions that older Americans make as grandparents, mentors, volunteers—then we have lost ten years of opportunity. Today, because of increased longevity and generally better health, we have opportunities for continued productivity and growth our parents and generations before us never had.”

“Innovative changes in technology, health care and retirement security are helping people to see aging as a time of continued growth, not a long decline into diminishment.”

“Today, I want us to challenge our outdated beliefs about aging and begin the hard work of developing new, innovative solutions that will allow more people to choose how they age.  I call this disrupting aging. By disrupting aging, we’re offering a new perspective.  We’re giving people the opportunity to embrace aging as something to look forward to; not something to fear; to see it as a period of growth, not decline; to recognize the opportunities, not just the challenges; and, perhaps most importantly, to see themselves and others as contributors to society, not burdens.”

“The 2015 White House Conference on Aging gives us an opportunity to disrupt aging—to empower people to take control of their futures and to age in the way that best suits them.  And, it gives us as thought leaders and practitioners a new challenge to permanently fix—not put a band aid on—the problems that have plagued generations. It opens the door to creating innovative solutions that make life better for all people as they age and for building innovative systems that serve the wants and needs of a new generation of Americans.

“While this Conference is about ‘Aging,’ what we’ve come to realize is that it’s really not about aging—it’s about living.”