Prevention and the Elderly: Appropriate Policies

Prologue: National demographic statistics show that the elderly population of this country has increased rapidly and will continue to grow into the twenty-first century as the postwar baby-boom generation ages. Experts have debated whether health promotion activities can be effective among older people, since one of the goals of health promotion is to prevent premature death and illness. In response to this debate, the University of Washington's Center for Health Promotion in Older Adults, the first of its kind in this nation, studied an older population of 25,000 patients being treated for coronary artery disease. Its findings dispel the notion that health promotion “is not worth it” for older people: older men and women benefited just as much from smoking cessation programs as did their middle-aged counterparts. In this article, Gilbert Omenn concludes, “As people live longer, there are more years for older people to benefit from health promotion/disease prevention activities.” He advocates the concept of “successful aging,” arguing that older people no longer have to be “willing to accept declines as the inevitable consequences of age.” Omenn received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a doctorate in genetics from the University of Washington in Seattle. He is professor of medicine and of environmental health, director of the Center for Health Promotion in Older Adults, and dean of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. He served as deputy science advisor and later as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Carter administration. He is a member of the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment Panel on Preventive Services under Medicare, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Board on Health Promotion/Disease Prevention, and the Charles A. Dana Foundation Health Advisory Board.