Adding Life to Years

Nevada seems like such a great place to live. You might not realize that it’s in terrible shape health-wise relative to other states.

That’s the picture painted by statistics presented at the Nevada Public Health Association annual conference, which was held Sept. 21 & 22 at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Here’s a sampling of numbers mentioned:

In terms of state health expenditures as a percentage of GSP, Nevada ranks 48th.

Number of primary-care physicians per 100,000 population: 46th

Registered nurses per 100K population: 50th

Children uninsured: 50th

Children immunized: 50th

Percentage of adults who visited a doctor in the past two years: 47th

Percentage of adults with poor mental health: 51st

Then there was this frightener: 35.7 percent of kindergarten students in Nevada are considered to be either overweight or at risk of overweight.

On the plus side (finally!), Nevada is No 3 in seat belt use.

What’s especially frustrating, said Jay Kvam, a health program specialist at the Nevada State Health Division, is that Nevada’s numbers are lower than surrounding states and lower than they one would expect them to be based on the state’s wealth and population.

More data can be found in the Nevada Health Scorecard prepared by the Nevada Academy of Health.

Tags: Jay Kvam, Nevada Academy of Health, Nevada rankings, NPHA

Hear psychiatrist Steven Rubin talk about “Autumn Leaves: Aging With and Without Dementia” in a Volunteer Educational Talk at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1.

The one-hour talk, presented by Senior Outreach Services of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, will be in the  Laxalt Auditorium of the Nelson Building, 401 W. 2nd St., Reno.

Dr. Rubin will talk about how memory changes with age and the biological and psychological changes that confront us all during our transitional years. There will also be discussion of managing dementia with and without medication.

Volunteer Educational Talks are free and open to anyone. Respond by August 28 to Sina Ward, 784-7506 or sinaw@unr.edu.

Come early, at 9:30,  and meet others  over a cup of coffee or tea. The talk will start at 10 and last about an hour.

Parking: Free parking is available for this event in the metered city lot on the east side (right side as you face the front) of the Nelson Building, 401 W. 2nd St., Reno.

Bonus: Hear about a free weatherization program available to lower-income seniors.

Dr. Rubin is a board-certified geriatric psychiatrist who practices in Reno. His areas of expertise include managing developmentally disabled young adults, assessing and treating cognitive, mood and behavioral geriatric declines, and treating acute and chronically unstable psychiatric illnesses.

He serves on the Nevada State Medicaid Drug Review Board and various ethics committees for state and local medical associations. He is the author of Autumn Leaves, Aging With and Without Dementia and speaks nationwide to clinicians on adult and geriatric psychiatric issues.

Tags: dementia, Senior Outreach Services, Steven Rubin, talk

Please be advised that the search for the Project Director, Volunteer Services position at the Sanford Center for Aging at the University of Nevada, Reno has been terminated due to the current budget reductions affecting the university.

Ms. Carole Anderson, a current UNR employee, has agreed to transfer from Human Resources to serve as the director for the coming year. Ms. Anderson will be responsible for leading and enhancing the fine work that the RSVP, Senior Outreach Services and Legacy Corps programs currently provide. She is a very capable and talented individual with many years of experience who will enable the university to continue the service that these programs provide to the community. We appreciate your continued support of the Sanford Center for Aging and the senior community.

Tags: Job opening, Legacy Corps, Retired and Senior Volunteer Program, Senior Outreach Services

The Sanford Center for Aging won its size division in the Bicycle Commuter Challenge on May 15 by having the highest percentage of its employees register to ride to work that day.

The competition was part of the annual national Bike to Work Day.

At a ceremony in downtown Reno on May 31, the SCA was presented with a plaque and a copy of the sign used to promote the event on RTC Ride buses. Grad assistant Rori Lee led the drive to get SCA employees to register online.

According to the story in the Reno Gazette-Journal, which quotes grad assistant Paula Valencia-Castro, 47 businesses entered and were divided into six categories based on number of employees. Nearly 1,000 people registered.

Tags: employee honors

By Ed Cohen

Robert Cialdini

Here’s an example of how social factors can influence our decision making:

If a restaurant prints “This is our most popular dessert” next to an item on its dessert menu, it will instantly become the most popular dessert.

That was one of the research findings mentioned by famous psychologist and author Robert Cialdini during a talk Tuesday morning at the Joe Crowley Student Union.

Cialdini, a professor of psychology and marketing at Arizona State, is the author of the best-seller Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which I read in one of my classes last year at USC, part of the master’s program on management of online communities. It’s a great book, very readable and compelling.

At UNR he was talking about research into how to influence people to act more responsibly in regard to the environment. He talked about a study that tried different kinds of appeals to get people to reuse their towels and linens in hotel rooms. We’ve all seen those signs asking us to reuse our towels to save on water and detergent and lessen the impact on the environment.

Cialdini’s study found that such appeals have almost no effect. The same was true of a message in which the hotel promised to make a donation to an environmental group on behalf of the guest if the guest complied in reusing towels.

He described two other kinds of appeals that worked much better.

One asked the guest to cooperate and help cover the cost that the hotel had incurred in donating to an environmental group on the guest’s behalf. Cialdini speculated that the success of this appeal was due to our innate sense of obligation to reciprocate when someone has given us something or done something on our behalf.

Even more successful was a sign in the bathroom that explained that the majority of people who had stayed in that very same room in the past had chosen to reuse their towels. Cialdini said people have a strong compulsion to act as people similar to them act, conform to the norm.

This last example reminded me of the recent public-service message campaign in which teens ask their peers if they know that 80 percent of teens in rural Nevada do NOT use tobacco products.

We should consider using this technique in marketing programs like Taking Charge and Medication Therapy Management. If we can show that the majority of elders are making, or want to make, smart choices about their care, more of them will probably conform to that norm.

Tags: Cialdini, influence, marketing