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Advance Health Care Planning with Dr. Grant Smith (Virtual)

January 19, 2021 by Cira Davis

Whether you are a person living with a serious illness, a caregiver, or the healthiest you have ever been, having some form of a care plan in the event you are unable to speak for yourself, is important for providing you and your family with the comfort and confidence knowing that your wishes will be honored no matter what happens. In this webinar, we will define advance health care planning, provide a framework for thinking about your wishes, and give guidance for talking to your doctors and loved ones about your wishes.


HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT:

To join by phone, dial 888-475-4499 (toll-free) or 669-900-6833 (local). Enter Meeting ID: 865 6747 4200, then press # twice.
To join with video, click this link: https://zoom.us/j/86567474200 to register and join. Wait in the “waiting room” until the activity is ready to start.

To create a friendly environment and minimize interruptions, we will close the activity to new participants 15 minutes after the start time. The above link will work on your tablet or your computer. You’ll be prompted to download a Zoom app the first time you use Zoom. If you’re using a PC or Mac, you can join from your web browser without using the Zoom software.

Tagged With: aging, choice, Dignity, Healthy Aging, service

What Matters Most: Palliative Care Myths, Misconceptions, and Setting the Record Straight (Virtual)

October 19, 2020 by Maia Veres

Join Dr. Grant Smith, the Medical Director of the Palliative Care Team at Stanford, to learn all about palliative care, a medical specialty that focuses on caring for people and families living with a serious illness. Palliative care focuses on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of an illness and aims to improve quality of life. It can be appropriate for people at any age and at any stage of illness, and it can be delivered alongside curative treatment. Come learn about what palliative care can offer and why it might be a great addition to your health care team.

Grant Smith, MD is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford School of Medicine. He provides palliative care services to patients who are admitted to the hospital as well as patients who are seen in a clinic setting, outside of the hospital. He is the Medical Director for the Palliative Care – Health Education, Engagement, and Promotion team at Stanford.

To join by phone, dial 888-475-4499 (toll free) or 669-900-6833 (local).
Enter Meeting ID: 865 6747 4200, then press # twice.

To join with video, click this link: https://zoom.us/j/86567474200 to register and join. Wait in the “waiting room” until the activity is ready to start.

To create a friendly environment and minimize interruptions, we will close the activity to new participants 15 minutes after the start time.

The above link will work on your tablet or your computer. You’ll be prompted to download a Zoom app the first time you use Zoom. If you’re using a PC or Mac, you can join from your web browser without using the Zoom software.

Tagged With: service, Wellness

Turkeys and Fixings Delivered With Kindness Again

December 21, 2018 by Marie Jobling

Good neighbors gathered around in the OMI and Bayview neighborhoods to deliver turkeys and fixings to those in needed – almost 1,300 household received this holiday blessing.  This would not have been possible without the generous support of the Glide Food Program.  Yet it marked the annual event where a broad cross-section of groups and individuals pitch in to identify families in need and help support in a multitude of ways.  Special thanks go out -in the OMI, to Deb Glen and the CLC team, Patti Clement and Catholic Charities and all the organizations that help arranged delivery to 600 households in the neighborhood.  In the Bayview, this would not have been possible without support from the SFHealth Department – Veronica Shepard, Tracy-Shaw Senigar, & Dr. Paula Jones;  the CLC Team led by Chester Williams,  Beverly Taylor and Jerry Mixon, Having Pride  UNITI,  Dr. Emily Wade Thompson, Joseph Lee Recreation Center and the Bayview Opera House, and the Faith Based Coalition.  And we stretched to meet the extra need, thanks to A. Philip Randolph Institute and San Francisco Health Department for extra turkeys and Meals on Wheels for helping round-up turkeys to deliver to the site.  

With this, we wish you and yours a happy, healthy, food-filled holiday season!

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Filed Under: Building Community, Volunteering & Giving Back Tagged With: contribution, food, neighbors, network, service

2018 Annual Award Event A Wonderful Community Gathering

September 30, 2018 by Marie Jobling

Our annual award event was filled with warmth and friendship with so many helping us mark our 10-year anniversary and honor this year’s Awardee, Ashley McCumber, Executive Director of Meals on Wheels San Francisco.  Enjoy the pictures and plan to join us again next year.  Thanks to all event and raffle sponsors and attendees for support. If you missed the party, but would still like to help us move with strength into our next decade, make a donation today.
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Filed Under: Events & Celebrations Tagged With: awards, Dignity, diversity, friends, leadership, neighbors, service

Loneliness Really Is a Public Health Issue

March 29, 2018 by Marie Jobling

Google Community Space and the Global Shapers hosted a thoughtful discussion on loneliness and increasing awareness of how bad it is for your health.   The panelist included:

  • Marie Jobling, Community Living Campaign
  • Anika Kumar, Forget Me Not
  • Richard Caro, Tech Enhanced Life
  • Jane Langridge, Little Brothers: Friends of the Elderly 

Kasley Killam, event organizer (and CLC Board member) facilitated a  solution-focused discussion about loneliness among seniors, raising awareness about this issue and  highlighting  efforts of each organization to address it.  The session closed with suggestions for how the more than 70 people who attended might take steps to contribute. The panel discussion is featured on the CLC Facebook page.  You can learn more about the issue in Kasley’s article in Scientific American.  

Loneliness: A Public Health Crisis Livestream

Posted by Global Shapers – San Francisco Hub on Wednesday, March 21, 2018

 

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Filed Under: Action & Advocacy, Resources, Volunteering & Giving Back Tagged With: community living, Dignity, financial security, growing old, Healthy Aging, innovation, isolation, service

The Final Frontier: New Options and More Decisions

March 24, 2018 by Jan Robbins

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A Texas company offers paperweights and other memorabilia infused with the ashes of loved ones. (Photo courtesy of Spirit Pieces)

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” –   Isaac Asimov

SENIOR BEAT – Doulas, green burials with wicker caskets and corpse location monitoring devices, space burials, resomation, diamonds colored by funeral ashes: Death’s vocabulary is expanding.  New – and old – ways of dealing with dying and death are emerging in this century.

Traditional funeral patterns and religious ceremonies are still in vogue. But a new consciousness is arising due to a range of new choices that is allowing people to be more in control of their final days and death in ways not possible in the past.

With more choices around life’s last process there are more decisions to be made.  They necessitate being introspective about personal values and spiritual feelings as well as aesthetics and practical matters.  It can be confounding.

Starting the conversation

Conferences on dying and death have become annual events for health and civic organizations. More intimate “death cafes” are another new trend. Originating from the “café mortel” movement that emerged in Switzerland and France around 2000, these are facilitated forums in a confidential setting where people feel free to talk philosophically and practically about death.

“Both my Mama and my dog were having health problems and in danger of dying and I could talk about them both without anyone judging me,” said Dany Vallerand. She attended a death café at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, which holds them once a year. The North Beach Library holds one every third Tuesday and Zen Hospice in Hayes Valley, once a month.

“Thinking more about death made me accept that death is part of life. Death is normal,” Vallerand said.

When exploring one’s feelings around life’s final chapter, it helps to understand how death has been handled over the years.

Death becomes a business

Up until the Civil War, disposition of remains was straightforward. If people died at home, families washed the body, prepared it for viewing, held a religious service then buried it in a plain pine box or a shroud in the local cemetery.  A simple headstone marked the grave.

The use of embalming fluid grew out of Civil War circumstances. A temporary preservative was needed to send dead Union soldiers from the sweltering South to their families in the North. As the 20th Century progressed, more people died in hospitals than at home. Death began to recede from public consciousness as funeral parlors took over duties once handled by the survivors.

The push of post-World War II consumerism turned burials into symbols of status, greatly increasing the price of funerals. In mid-century, with median annual income just $5,600, families were cajoled into paying upwards of $1,000 for a funeral.

Costs boost use of cremation

Cost consideration has boosted the popularity of cremation. Today, it ranges between $1,500 and $3,000, while a traditional burial is between $7,000 and $10,000, according to The National Funeral Directors Association. In 2016, cremations accounted for 50.2 percent of funerals, up from 47.9 percent in 2015, NFDA statistics show. It estimates that by 2035, the rate of cremation will reach 78.8 percent.

Cremation is a more viable option as fewer Americans these days live and die in the same place. In addition, people are placing less importance on religion in funerals, according to the NFDA.

Everything about the process of dying and death seems to be getting a makeover. Resomation is an improvement on cremation that prevents the release of toxic chemicals. Green burials, whether of ashes or a body, are gaining ecological creds.

Departing from traditional ways

Even memorial services are being revisited. A growing number of families are substituting memorial services with “Life Well Celebrated” events. These more individualized expressions of feelings can be held in a crematory, as an add-on cost, or at locations as diverse as a bar, a beach or a sports arena.

Cremains can now become memorial objects, blended into jewelry or other pieces of art. One Swiss company creates a synthetic diamond whose color – everything from black to yellow to glow-in-the-dark – results from the inclusion of trace body elements.

Another decision for those considering cremation is what to do with the ashes. NFDA statistics show 46 percent of ashes are buried in a cemetery or interned in a columbarium with 39 percent are returned to families – to dispose of, keep or scatter. State laws dictate where: in most cases, in national parks with a permit, or at sea at least three nautical miles from shore.

Ten percent of cremains are scattered at a place not a cemetery. Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist and mind expansionist, chose something unique for his “final trip,” which occurred in 1996. He had his ashes blasted into space.

Some 22 years later, it’s easy to find companies that will launch the last of you to the edge of the earth’s atmosphere. Ashes are placed in special latex balloons and released into high altitude winds. Flights are filmed so that friends and family can watch as they create a glittering plume against the curvature of the Earth.

Becoming one with the environment

Environmental concerns have contributed to an increased interest in green burials. Caskets and  the cremation process contribute unhealthy elements to the earth, said Jane Hill, a presenter at a recent symposium on death and dying at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.

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The Conley woodland burial ground, opened in 1999,  is one of several grounds established by GreenAcres, a leader in the funeral and burial industry in Great Britain.

A Bay Area importer and distributor of biodegradable caskets, Hill got the green burial bug watching HBO’s “Six Feet Under.” She became the sole U.S. distributor for Ecoffins, one of the first natural casket manufacturers in England. Moving to the U.S., she founded Final Footprints, which imports coffins made of bamboo, banana, rattan, and sea grass and lined in organic cotton.

Cremation floats carbon dioxide into the air, exacerbating climate change, she said. Sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions contribute to acid rain. The fillings in teeth release mercury, which can cause neurological damage, especially in children. To top it off, there’s the potent toxic dioxin.

New technology offers ecological solution

A new technology called Alkaline Hydrolysis points to a better way, at about the same cost as cremation. Also known water cremation or resomation, use of the technology was recently approved by the California Legislature and will become law on July 1, 2020.

Resomation vents nothing into the air and uses electricity that can be sourced from renewables or carbon-free sources, according to The Bay Area Funeral Consumers Association. A high pH solution dissolves soft body parts. , leaving behind only bones, which will be crushed and returned to the family in the same way as cremation ashes. Dental amalgams and other metals in the body do not dissolve but remain intact. The metals, which can be recycled, and the crushed bones are returned to the family.

Green remains contain no embalming fluid and are often placed on designated land with a small rock or planted tree to mark the grave. You can add a GPS locating device for when flora and fauna obscure the spot.

Previously used grave sites?

Green cemeteries in the U.S. are few and far between. But in the Bay Area, there’s a 19th century establishment that has set aside part of its land for green burials. At Mill Valley’s Fernwood Cemetery, land restoration and preservation are paramount.

Besides infusing the earth with embalming fluids and littering the ground with steel, copper, bronze, reinforced concrete and sometimes endangered hardwoods, Hill said, traditional caskets take up valuable space.

It’s become an issue for many densely populated areas. Some cemeteries in England are considering re-using graves once full decomposition has occurred, according to C.A. Beal, who is writing a book on the topic, “Be A Tree; the Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a Forest.”

And even more decisions

Although old-time home funerals are rare, they do exist. California has no law requiring that a licensed funeral director be involved in making or carrying out funeral arrangements. But because things could go awry with a dead body, The National Home Funeral Alliance offers information, guidance, resources – even links to home-friendly funeral directors.

Before you even get to disposition and burial considerations, you may want to decide what to do with your body parts. In 2005, California launched an online organ, eye and tissue donor registry with a confidential database.

“I decided to donate my brain to UCSF,” said Mary Hunt, a San Francisco senior. “After participating in a research project there, I thought donating my brain could help further knowledge of brain injury.”

The most difficult choice

Perhaps the most difficult decision of all – whether to facilitate your own death – was made possible in 2016, with the legalization in California of Physician Associated Dying (PAD).

California is the fifth state to allow the procedure. PDA laws across states are similar: Patients must have a life expectancy of six months or less, certified by two physicians, and must be able to self-administer oral drugs at a lethal dose.

To assist the dying, the Medicare Hospice Benefit was established in 1983 to provide access to quality end-of-life care. A team of professionals provide medical care, pain management and emotional and spiritual support. Hospice care is in nursing homes, residential facilities, hospice inpatient facilities and acute care hospitals.

But the majority of patients receive hospice care in their homes, according to a 2014 survey by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. For those who have resources for more end-of-life services, death doulas can provide more household help and round-the-clock companionship than hospice workers.

Don’t forget your stuff – or Spot

There are so many loose ends at the end of a person’s life. Bodies and ashes aren’t the only the only remains to be disposed of.  There’s also a lifetime of acquisitions.

In a new book called The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, author Margareta Magnusson – a Swedish artist who describes herself as somewhere between age 80 and 100 – makes a case for “dostadning,” a hybrid of the words for death and cleaning.  Magnusson said to think of the benefits of giving things to family and friends while still alive.

Esther Torres, before an operation, cleaned out her apartment in a major way. “I didn’t want my parents to have to face so much clutter. And, now that I’m well, I’m enjoying the lightness.”

And, don’t forget about Spot. If a dog is accompanying one into older age, think about enrolling her in the SF SPCA Sido program which ensures that pets will be lovingly cared for if they outlive their guardians.

Thinking over all options for end-of-life will help you make important decisions for your advance health care directive, said attorney Deborah L. Fox, who presented a seminar on “Getting Your Ducks in a Row before You Go” at the JCCSF conference.  Also called a living will or medical directive, it’s a legal document in which you specify what actions should be taken for your health if illness, or if incapacity renders you unable to make such decisions.

As Harriet Beecher Stowe said, “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

Contact Jan at jrobbins-seniorbeat@sfcommunityliving.org

Filed Under: Resources, SF Senior Beat Stories Tagged With: cremation, death, death cafe, end of life, funeral, funeral home, green burial, resomation, service

CLC’s 2014 Annual Award Event Honors Hadley Dale Hall

September 29, 2014 by Marie Jobling

CLC_2014_Program_CovWe had a great time celebrating our work together and honoring Hadley Dale Hall on September 18th with the Norma Satten Community Service Award.  Our heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed – sponsors, auction and raffle donors, performers, volunteers, staff, and the many people who came to share in the fun. Funds raised through this annual event help support our programs and partnerships as we work to build aging- and disability-friendly neighborhoods.

If you would like to learn more about Hadley, the event sponsors or the Community Living Campaign, you can view a copy of the evening’s program book: 2014 Norma Satten Award Program Book (PDF, 14MB)

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Filed Under: Events & Celebrations, Volunteering & Giving Back Tagged With: awards, contribution, Healthy Aging, leadership, service

‘Having Pride UNITI’ is Committed to the Bayview Community

May 2, 2014 by Marie Jobling

The Food Network in the Bayview would not have been possible without the commitment of Having Pride UNITI, so we want to tell you a little about them.   We had heard about their special “Queen for Today” event.  But it wasn’t until we went to their event on April 27th at Southeast Community College that we realized the extent of their commitment to the community.   In a lovely dinner, they honored 6 strong, committed women – including CLC Connector Deloris McGee.  Other honorees included LaVaughn Kellum King, Cathy Davis, Patricia Earby-Banks, Rene Ford Underwood and the late Mildred Elizabeth Armstrong.   Highlights of the evening included vocal and music entertainment by D-Jay T.C., Stephanie Woodford, the United Body of Believers Choir, Keynote Speaker William Wesley, and recognition to  Jacqueline Norman for make the hall look spectacular, Oscar and Pat James and assistants for a truly delicious dinner, and Bay Copy and Vernice Ross for graphics and printing.  Some of these engaging photos are by Bayview Community Connector Etta Jones.   We thank UNITI leaders, including President Randolph James,  for their support of the Bayview Food Network as well as Veronica Shepard of Bayview Health & Wellness Center.    

 

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Filed Under: Building Community, Events & Celebrations Tagged With: diversity, Healthy Aging, leadership, neighbors, network, service

Remembering Norma Satten 2013 Awards Video

October 1, 2013 by Marie Jobling

Each year, lots of us work hard to create home and community-based services and supports so that individuals can live with dignity regardless of age or disability. Once a year, we honor leadership in the movement for Community Living. Over the past two years, the Norma Satten Community Service Innovation Award has recognized the work of Libby Denebeim and Anni Chung. Please watch the video and let us know who you think has provided that much needed leadership in San Francisco and might be the honoree in 2014. A special thank you to the Satten Family and Tree Ring Productions for their support in crafting this video.

Filed Under: Volunteering & Giving Back Tagged With: awards, community living, contribution, Dignity, friends, Healthy Aging, innovation, service, video

‘Aging While Black’ Forum Inspires Once Again

September 15, 2013 by Marie Jobling

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The popular Aging While Black Forum in the OMI drew an even larger and more engaged audience this year.  The event, held at IT Bookman Community Center on Randolph Street, featured De De Hornes (Forum Moderator), with presenters who brought their wit and wisdom to the topics – Jacqueline Scott (Caregiving and Aging), Dorsey Nunn (Prisoners and Aging), Dr. Brenda Thomas  (Dental Care and Aging) and Charles Clerkly (Finances and Aging).   Rose Snell welcomed participants and Dinah Blanson provide a small thank-you gift to the presenters in honor of their good sense (cents).  And everyone thanked Deloris McGee for her work in organizing this  event for the second year in a row.   After the formal presentations, speakers and participants stayed and talked informally for another hour and enjoyed refreshments provided by Mamie Burgess and Judy Auda.   As the event drew to a close, folks were heard asking “How long until the next Aging While Black event?”  

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Filed Under: Action & Advocacy, Diversity in Aging Tagged With: community living, financial security, growing old, Healthy Aging, neighbors, service

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