Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula Newletter

MONTEREY , Calif. — Advances in medicine, public health, and lifestyle management have set off a demographic shift that’s crested into an “age wave” of baby boomers and mature adults. Author, futurist, and entrepreneur Maddy Dychtwald is a leading expert on this population bubble and how it is transforming every aspect of our personal, social, financial, and political lives.

Dychtwald will share that expertise as keynote speaker at the joint annual meeting of CommunityHospital of the Monterey Peninsula’s Auxiliary and Community Hospital Foundation on January 30. Before Dychtwald’s talk, Steven Packer, MD, president/CEO of Community Hospital, will deliver a state-of-the-hospital address, review highlights of 2008, and discuss what’s ahead this year.

More than two decades ago, Dychtwald and her husband, Ken, co-founded Age Wave, a research and consulting firm focused on the aging of the population and its profound implications. Drawing on her research, analysis, and observation, Dychtwald has concluded that age is becoming less relevant in defining who we are and how we live our lives. Throughout most of history, she says, life was short and people lived a predictable linear life plan: First they learned, then they worked, then they rested and died. That was life. But that model of life is quickly changing as life expectancy soars and the boomer generation begins to hit their so-called mature years, she says.

Rather than follow a linear path, Dychtwald says, people now can go back to school at 40, 60 or 80, have second and third careers, and reinvent their retirement years. She has written about this cyclic approach to life in her book, Cycles: How We Will Live, Work, and Buy.

“We cycle into different life stage events not based on how old we are,” she writes, “but based on what we feel like doing. Age no longer defines who we are.”

Dychtwald is working on her third book, Power Shift: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power Will Change the World, scheduled for publication in January 2010. During her career, she has addressed more than 250,000 business leaders worldwide including a diverse group of clients such as Allegiance Healthcare, A.C. Nielsen, Blue Cross of California, Chevron, and Fidelity Investments. She also has been featured in articles in leading newspapers and magazines nationwide, including Advertising Age, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and US News and World Report, and has appeared on many radio and television programs.

She and her husband and their two children live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

With Americans living longer than ever, many medical policy experts say it’s critical that the health-care system undergo a shift from a focus on treatment of diseases to preventing them.

Life expectancy at birth in 2006 rose to a record 78.1 years nationwide as mortality rates fell in almost all leading causes of death, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

But some in the medical community worry that the U.S. health-care system isn’t designed properly to handle a flood of aging residents as the first members of the baby-boomer generation begin to reach retirement age.

“The question is how’s that longevity going to look like: people living 30 more years with poor health and sedentary lifestyles not being able to enjoy life, work, see family and enjoy their time on earth?” asked Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of AgeWave Inc., a San Francisco-based think tank.

“The other scenario is: We can create a new way of looking at aging, so we can hold off or prevent many of the diseases that happen to us as we get older,” said Dychtwald, whose group studies aging of the population and what it means for business.

Live Well, Live Sensibly

Dychtwald’s observation was echoed in a commentary in this month’s Academic Medicine, a journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Instead of the current system’s disease-oriented, reactive and sporadic approach to care, Drs. Ralph Snyderman and Ziggy Yoediono of Duke University suggest a movement toward an approach that emphasizes personalized medicine and strategic health planning to prevent disease and maximize health.

A separate study last month from the Trust for America’s Health found that Tennessee could see annual savings of $351 million, or a 6-to-1 return, within five years of investing $10 per person a year on disease prevention. Targets might include programs related to boosting physical activity, improving nutrition and quitting smoking.

The 2006 increase in life expectancy the CDC found in its study – a jump of four months versus the previous two-to-three months annual average – reflected a drop in mortality rates for causes of death such as heart disease, cancer, accidents and diabetes.

But Dychtwald said that although strides are being made in extending life, much remains to be done to ensure that it’s a life worth living.

For instance, more changes are needed in the way that health care is reimbursed to emphasize and reward prevention over sick care, Dychtwald said. More emphasis also needs to be placed on encouraging behavior in people, including eating a healthy diet, exercising and managing stress, to help build resistance to various diseases.

That implies individuals taking more personal responsibility for their health care.

“The doctor can’t stand next to you and say eat less fatty foods, eat more whole grains and veggies,” Dychtwald said. “It’s something you have to do for yourself.”