Boomers leading change
Colorado ranks third in the nation for highly educated adults, with 35.5 percent holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. With its well-educated 55+ population, Denver is a potential laboratory for innovative and creative approaches to aging.
The Denver metro area has the highest concentration of baby boomers in any major U.S. region. In 2010, nearly 300,000 people ages 55–64 will be living in the Denver metro area. By 2030, this population will grow to an estimated 1.3 million. Recognizing that baby boomers offer a large reservoir of human capital to address pressing social and economic needs, Rose Community Foundation’s Boomers Leading Change initiative is a catalyst to energize and invigorate boomers as they reinvent a “new norm” for the way they—and those who follow—will live in their 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond. Through its involvement in Community Experience Partnership (CEP), the Foundation is building on this initiative with Boomers Leading Change in Health (BLCiH), which aims to improve access to quality health care.
The vision of Boomers Leading Change is that the baby boom generation will revolutionize both the perception and the reality of aging through productive, meaningful engagement in the community and the economy. For most, it means creating a balanced life that includes flexible employment, useful service and opportunities to learn. But the barriers to achieving this vision are many and varied, beginning with the mindset of many boomers about the deficits that accumulate with aging. More substantive barriers include future income security; employment practices and policies; health status, health care and insurance coverage; insufficient capacity in the nonprofit sector to utilize highly skilled volunteers; and scarce attention to the lifelong education needs of older adults among mainstream educational institutions. Rose believes that the boomer cohort has an abundance of the needed leadership, skills and motivation to overcome these barriers and shape a new context for 50+ civic engagement.
As a CEP participant, Rose is committed to developing and implementing a community-based initiative that organizes older adults to address a pressing community need. As a health-conversion foundation, Rose Community Foundation’s mission is to strengthen the health of the entire community in the broadest sense; more specifically, it has a strong track record of supporting systemic improvements in health care and policy through both responsive and proactive grantmaking. During 2009, Rose developed Boomers Leading Change in Health, an initiative to increase access to quality health care as well as patient satisfaction by recruiting, training and deploying boomers as health system navigators. Additionally, the initiative will help strengthen the consumer advocacy voice for reforms in health care systems and public policy.
For many health care consumers, the current health care system is complex, fragmented and constantly changing. Health care is a top concern for metro Denver boomers, and it is high on the public policy agenda as a fundamental component in Denver’s quality of life. On an individual, informal basis, many boomers already have experience navigating the health care system on behalf of their elderly parents, their families and themselves. Both health care systems and health consumers would benefit from navigators with the knowledge and skills to efficiently and effectively connect people to systems and services with the goal of improving overall health.
To help connect consumers to appropriate healthcare services and resources, and to address the larger systemic and policy issues related to health care, Rose Community Foundation has designed BLCiH as a way to apply the talents and experience of an aging population to the critical health related issues identified in the CEP community assessment phase, and further articulated during the CEP planning phase. BLCiH will recruit, train and place boomers in health care navigator and community health worker services to help individuals find their way through the health care maze, thereby improving health care satisfaction. Additionally, BLCiH will engage boomers who want to learn more about and get involved in health care change in their community.
