Aging is something we all share in common, yet it’s often framed as decline rather than growth. In this first part of our conversation with Jennifer Jones of the Csomay Center for Gerontological Excellence and Angela Charsha-Harney, Associate Director of Fitness and founder of thinkJOY, we explore how reframing aging can transform health and community.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the student hosts, guests, and contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the University of Iowa or the College of Public Health.

Lauren Lavin:

Hello everybody and welcome back to Plugged In to Public Health. I’m Lauren Lavin, and if it’s your first time with us, welcome. We’re a student-run podcast that digs into major issues in public health and show us why they matter for all of us inside and outside the field.

In this episode, we’re talking about something that unites every single one of us, aging. We’re joined by Jennifer Jones from the University of Iowa’s Csomay Center for Gerontological Excellence, and Angela Charsha-Harney, Associate Director of Fitness and Founder of the nonprofit thinkJOY. Together, they bring both research and real-world experience to the question of how to age well.

In part one, we’re going to talk about how personal connections can spark powerful community programs, why joy is more than just a feel-good add-on to health and some of the most common misconceptions about aging that we all need to let go of. So let’s get Plugged In to Public Health.

Thank you both for joining me on the podcast today. If I could have you guys each start and just share a little bit about yourself, what you do, who you are, anything that you think might be relevant to our listeners, that would be great. And we’ll start with you, Jennifer.

Jennifer Jones:

Sure. Thanks Lauren for having us today. I’m excited to talk about aging and aging optimally along with Angela. I am actually excited to announce I will be moving into a new position here at the Csomay Center for Gerontological Excellence. Let’s pause and introduce what that is.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Jennifer Jones:

We are a Center for Aging Excellence here at the University of Iowa. We are housed in the College of Nursing. We’ve had a really long history with the College of Nursing, but my position has really been about community engagement and reaching out and finding resources and helping older adults connect and helping resource and resource connect. And I will be the new outreach education and programming coordinator starting July 1st. So we’re really excited about that move because it’s a reflection of growth that has happened. And everybody’s talking about aging right now and we’re excited about that.

Lauren Lavin:

Well, congratulations on the new position. That’s so exciting. And it’s like right around the corner because we’re recording this June 24th, so any day now.

Jennifer Jones:

Right, you’re the first ones. It’s like breaking news.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

I love that, Jennifer.

Lauren Lavin:

Jennifer, what a perfect job for you. Congratulations. I’m really excited to see what you have in a few over there. This is such great news.

Jennifer Jones:

Thank you. And it fits so well into having this conversation with Angela, who is one of those fabulous resources for older adults.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Oh, you’re very [inaudible 00:02:31]

Lauren Lavin:

With that, Angela, you want to introduce yourself?

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Sure. My name is Angela Charsha-Harney. I’m the Associate Director of Fitness here at the University of Iowa with the Department of Recreational Services. And I will say that the aging piece is more connected to my time working as a personal trainer and overseeing and working with lots of clients that are experiencing aging, because aren’t we all, and with the recent nonprofit organization called thinkJOY, where I’m the director and president of the organization.

And our mission is to support successful aging by leaning into the health benefits of happiness. And most importantly, that thinkJOY vision is to live in a community where joy is a valued priority. And so certainly we look forward to helping people find joy in their lives and this particular organization does serve the senior citizen population.

Lauren Lavin:

I love that. I am so excited about this conversation.

Jennifer Jones:

We are too, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Great. Can you talk about what your journey and what inspired you to found thinkJOY?

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Sure. Well, just personally, I’ve always been deeply connected to nonprofit work and I worked with a team of women that started Girls on the Run in 2008, and that’s another organization that works with youth, but also with happiness and connection and feeling proud of yourself and finding joy in movement and all of those things that thinkJOY sort of leans into as well. But this particular organization started from, and inspired by, one of the personal training clients that I was working with that was living with dementia. And to understand him better and how to work and help him sort of off the field of our track and our weightlifting, I went and got dementia care practitioner certified and I got my staff certified as dementia friends so that we can help anybody that walks into our facility in a very respectful way.

But specifically with this particular client, that’s where the joy of the nonprofit came from. He was coming in to work out with us. He was the most happy when he was here. He had lots of wonderful memories in some of the University of Iowa campus facilities. And so through our conversations, sometimes on a warming up on the track or just while we were working out, he would tell lots and lots of stories about his time playing racquetball, his time weightlifting, his time with personal trainers that he saw before me. And he really just had a ton of joy and a lot of memories that he would share, and he’d really come alive when he would do that. And so his family at the time was going on a big trip out of the country and he was not joining them. And so I had just randomly asked him, what would you do if you had a day or a trip that you could do and just choose what you’d like to spend the day doing?

And everything that he talked about was close to home. It was attainable. It was very simple and it just reminded me that it’s the simple things in life that are what matter the most to a lot of people. And so the little things are the big things. And so we started to just do small field trips and he’d get his exercise in and steps in telling stories, but the first sort of field trip was to the field house on campus where he told lots of stories. And then we sort of thought about thinkJOY and thought about other community members in our community and in our area that might not have family or other people that connect them or give them the opportunity to go to places that are meaningful for them. And so we started thinkJOY with the idea that it’s sort of a day by design for seniors or a Make-A-Wish day at the local level for senior citizens.

And so that’s how it all started and through the changes and just the growth, we do Day-by-Design, but we also do gifting opportunities and we do special events in some of the assisted living facilities in our area. So yeah, one small beautiful relationship with a personal training client created opportunities for us to create joy for other people across our community. And so the saddest part is that I actually just went to my client’s funeral last this week.

Lauren Lavin:

Oh.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

I know. But just such a beautiful legacy in my heart and in the people that know how thinkJOY started is through the time that we had together. So yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, what an incredible legacy to leave behind. And I love that it started with just that one personal connection. I think a lot of people when they think about nonprofit organizations or these bigger organizations that we have contact with, we think that we couldn’t do that too. But it just started with a personal relationship that established a need that you saw, and then from there it grew. So I think that makes it more attainable if you see things in your own community that you could address.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah. And a couple of years ago, and even today, there’s lots of things going on in this world where it’s really hard to think about making a donation and having that donation make a difference. You’re just not sure where to go and what to do and what’s enough.

Lauren Lavin:

Absolutely.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

And so yeah, that was the beauty of keeping this organization small and meaningful is that we can, even with the smallest things, we can create joy and make a difference in somebody’s life.

Lauren Lavin:

And how long have you been doing this work?

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah, one year. So we are just now on our second year.

Lauren Lavin:

Great. And then Jennifer, do you want to talk a little bit about Csomay Center’s work, both its mission and vision, and then how you have gotten involved with it and your work there?

Jennifer Jones:

Absolutely. So the mission of the Csomay Center is to advance innovations in research, education and practice. And I said when I was introducing myself, we have this long history with the College of Nursing. We existed as a different aging center from 2000 until 2017, and we really were looking at those opportunities for our clinical students to have a gero or older adults experience because let’s think about who our nurses will be taking care of down the road, it will be me, older, and what is that research that we can utilize and how can we support that to discover best practices in the care of older adults.

So there’s that component of it, but our vision is about every older adult receiving the care they want when they want. And I just think it’s really interesting. There’s a lot of conversation about age-friendly now. Again, aging is a really hot topic and I don’t want to say a trend because we’ve been aging for as long as there have been human beings but really having, I think, great conversations about aging, about opportunities and my trajectory to get to Csomay Center, I kind of feel like it’s been the whole umbrella of aging.

I ran a daycare for 12 years and had little people under the age of four, and then I moved to a critical access hospital and I was their director of development. And that was about sharing a really great mission and vision and really having people learn about the value of having appropriate healthcare. Now, this position at the Csomay Center, I moved to Iowa City in July of 2022, and this position opened up in January of 2023. I felt like it was the blend of caring for people, these people just happened to be older people, but also that ability to go out and share a great mission and a great vision and talk about something we will all experience.

To me, aging is a universal common denominator. It’s something we all get to experience, it doesn’t matter what we do, what our career is, what our major was or anything. So how can we have really great conversations about aging and help people because it’s a journey. It’s different for you, it’s different for Angela, it will be different for me, but there’s also this commonality to it. So I think the Csomay Center in the last two years, two and a half years, that I’ve been here, we have seen an increase in community interest. We definitely have, the baby boomer population is exploding and they have an interest, a vested interest, who’s going to be caregiving for me? Or they are caregiving or the sandwich generation, which could be its own podcast and Angela and have talked about that a little bit.

We’re kind of in these really interesting times where we will have such a large population of older adults who will require caregiving and we haven’t had this before. So it’s just really exciting to be at an aging center. We have a great reputation. Thank you, University of Iowa, it’s wonderful to have that brand behind us to be able to go out into the public and share connections. And I loved, Angela, how you were talking about how it’s one relationship that starts everything, and I feel like that with us.

Sometimes when I meet someone who, maybe they own a nonprofit, like an Angela and this is what she does, and I have the opportunity to go share her work. Is there a win in that for the Csomay Center? I mean, I get a warm fuzzy from introducing people, but it really is about relationship building and that’s where we are going to change the way we age. That’s where we’re going to create a really great support system for aging adults, all of us included in that. And it just is really exciting to be part of that.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I think you made a really good point about how it’s this common thread that unites all of us. We can’t outrun aging, whether you’re 25 like I am, or [inaudible 00:12:40].

Jennifer Jones:

You’re right, like I’m about to be, exactly.

Lauren Lavin:

Right. We all have to deal with it in some facet at some point or come to terms with it. And so I think it is work that we should all be at least a little bit interested in because I think it’s all going to come to us. I think about my grandmother who has dementia and my mom caregiving for her, and how our whole family has had to come around to support just the aging of one person. And one thing that we often say, because her care has gotten really complicated, is what do people who don’t have a family or don’t live close to their family do in these situations? I’ve really noticed this in the last year or two, how important it is to have people around you or a support system around you as you age. This is just work that needs to be done. With the Csomay Center, are they focused on aging in Iowa or are they doing it on a bigger scale across the US?

Jennifer Jones:

We obviously have an interest in the state of Iowa, and I think part of what my job has been for the last 24 months especially, who’s doing what in Iowa and how do we get their message out? Can we help elevate their platform? Can we introduce them to other resources because maybe their services build upon one another or complement one another? But at the same time, we have really been also experiencing a national view, I guess.

We’ve had people reach out to us from all different organizations and different resources. The National Senior Games has reached out to us to participate in Des Moines in July, which is just one of those weird pivots, but it’s again, aging and it’s aging optimally. But serving, looking at funding organizations nationally who look at a smaller center like the Csomay Center and say, okay, what are you looking at on that small level, kind of those grassroots efforts, those pilot projects, and how can we become involved in that? So it’s really interesting. Iowa, it’s national, it’s local, it’s just, again, as you said, everybody is going to experience aging. You can’t outrun it. So we’re all in this big swirling box of, I don’t even know what the word would be, busyness around aging, just opportunities I think is probably the best way. There are so many opportunities on so many different levels within this concept of aging.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

I was going to say too, Lauren, and that’s what’s so interesting about this particular nonprofit that in the focus of thinkJOY, there’s so many huge needs for care, especially for the aging population that don’t have family or don’t have financial wealth or don’t have other opportunities for resources. And a lot of people would say, listen, Angela, that’s great, joy and happiness, how fuzzy and cute is that? But we have people that are looking for food and shelter and medical care and X, Y and Z.

And I remember thinking like, wow, are we really not important enough? But the more I think about it, joy and happiness is so connected to physical and mental health in particular, it’s connected to worth and excitement for the future. There’s so many health benefits by enjoying a moment or feeling like you matter. And so that’s what thinkJOY does. There’s so many wonderful resources that beautifully help and assist in other areas and we think that happiness and joy is also something that’s really, really important. And we know we can’t, and we are not, here to foster helping somebody find shelter. That’s not what our nonprofit does. But certainly we do think that we can create some sort of happiness that might help somebody have a better day.

Lauren Lavin:

There are a [inaudible 00:16:34] of that.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah. But there are definitely a lot of needs, but what is life without joy? And so…

Lauren Lavin:

Not a very good one.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah, I know.

Jennifer Jones:

Well, it’s kind of funny. We’re on a college of public health podcast, so to me, joy, that feeling of overall happiness, it makes it easier sometimes to address all those social determinants of health. And for that public health moment, I have a master’s in public health, so I think public health will probably be the group that solves all the problems in the world. That’s what I’ve always felt about public health.

Lauren Lavin:

Yes.

Jennifer Jones:

But it’s just each social determinant of health, it all connects to together. So if we can have a moment of happiness or a moment of joy, and if that is having a conversation with someone else who maybe does have an answer for us or can help us through the next step, again, it’s about building that network of support. And I think what you’re doing, Angela, by allowing that happiness platform is terrific.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Oh, you’re very sweet.

Jennifer Jones:

Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

So you both have kind of touched on this, and I just thought I’d elaborate a little bit more, it’s kind of a follow-up question, that aging has become kind of a hot topic recently. Why do you guys, think that that is, as we kind of move into the aging part of our discussion?

Jennifer Jones:

I think obviously the demographic boom that’s happening with the baby boomers born 1946 to 1963, huge, huge demographic swing that’s occurring. By 2030, we’re going to have more people in the world over the age of 65 than under the age of 18. So you think about that for a minute. More people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18, in 10 years, I’ll be 65. So who are my caregivers coming up out of that group of 18-year-olds and those early twenties, who will be the care providers for that group?

And it’s just something we’ve never seen before. We are living longer. Our lifespans will probably be longer, but we as Americans, as Americans, might not have a healthy lifespan. That health span is not particularly showing any positive results. So I think that’s something we really need to talk about and begin because so many baby boomers will be older and are requiring care because we are living longer. Those of us in that sandwich generation, the Gen X-ers, the older Gen Z’s and Millennials are experiencing caregiving, which we didn’t really talk about 30 years ago, maybe even 20 years ago.

People just, families have dispersed a little differently. Not everybody stays in the same town, or there’s not necessarily that person who is there to help take care of families. Lauren, you talked about that. Your family’s come together to help care for your grandma. It is really difficult if your kids have gone to different states or there’s just no one else around, and you’re in this situation of trying to find help and support and you’re the sole family member. So while we’ve experienced aging from millennia, we’re experiencing this in this number situation we’ve never seen before and the caregiving need is something we’ve never experienced before.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

And I completely agree with Jennifer on all the statistics. I think too, when it comes to just wellbeing and mental health in general, I think our society has started to pay a little bit closer attention to that. And with COVID, it pulled at our heartstrings with the loneliness of the senior citizens. And so for us at thinkJOY, when we first started to just think about starting this organization in general, we didn’t really understand the research behind the numbers of aging. And once we started to understand and dive into the statistics that Jennifer’s talking about, we thought, oh boy, is there ever a need for this wellbeing shift, this need for trying to help with this aging population? And we had no idea the research that we would dive into as it relates to aging and health and happiness and joy and the connections to health in general, to those things, and then going into the aging population, it floored us and it just reminded us how big of a need it was.

But even with loneliness in general, people really didn’t talk about loneliness being connected to wellbeing before. And so when we started really diving into all the research, it kept going on in so many different directions, with loneliness, with mental health, with wellbeing, with giving back to your community, with what does volunteering do for you? The research just never ended. And so loneliness is, I have two teenage children and everybody is on their phones, and I’m constantly talking to that generation about being lonely. And the more I open my eyes, the more I think I realize how loneliness impacts everybody, that’s another huge need. And a reason why I think our shift in thinking about aging changed, at least with our organization, is how do we then combat that loneliness piece and can we create opportunities for people to connect and be together?

Lauren Lavin:

Love it. Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like it was just kind of the crossroads of all of these things aligned, I don’t know if we want to say perfectly because I don’t know if it’s a good thing, but it aligned in a way that it was a good thing that people could start to see this happen.

Jennifer Jones:

Yeah. Well, I do think it’s a good thing. I think for a long time, society has looked at aging as a deficit, and aging is not a deficit. We should be thrilled that we get to age. First of all, the alternative is not great, but there’s this beautiful thing in aging. We plant trees and we watch trees grow, so why don’t we watch ourselves grow? To me, it’s that similar… I don’t know. It’s interesting that we really truly have seen aging as a deficit or we lose things and the fact of the matter is aging allows us to have opportunities, and with opportunities comes experience, and with experience comes wisdom. So what a beautiful thing and a beautiful way to look at aging. But when we’ve lived in a world that’s anti-aging that’s a real problem.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, definitely.

Jennifer Jones:

Yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Angela, do you have any common misconceptions about aging that you see from a physical perspective or the thinkJOY perspective?

Angela Charsha-Harney:

I think, Jennifer, you hit the nail on the head in terms of thinking about all the anti-aging things out there. Anti-aging means you are not living, right?

Lauren Lavin:

Right. Anti-aging is a marketing ploy. You [inaudible 00:23:52] the beauty industry. It’s all anti-aging.

Jennifer Jones:

Everything, yeah.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

We hate it. I think Jennifer and I were both saying misconception is that aging is bad, misconception that aging is going the wrong way, Misconception that it’s just getting you closer to the end of life and that you can’t find joy and you can’t find new opportunities to enjoy your life in different capacities. But mostly too, a misconception is that aging looks the same for everybody, or that those that are wealthy don’t have the same aging issues that those that are economically more challenged. And so there’s a lot of misconceptions out there that make it really difficult to put a sticker tag on everybody and put them in a bucket of what aging looks like or what it should feel like or how it impacts them.

Lauren Lavin:

I think about, especially as a young woman, there is just so much, I think, negativity towards aging that it’s even affecting our generation now and the things that we’re doing now to try to offset that. I wonder what the negative impacts are going to be in a few years, and if we tether our value so much to this physical, because I do think a lot of it is the physical components of aging, so if we tether it to how we look now, it can be, I think, really daunting. I don’t know how you ever learn to love yourself if you can’t even accept how it is now and you’re worried about the future.

Jennifer Jones:

Well, and I hope that’s something our generation can improve upon for your generation, Lauren. I have a daughter who’s just a little older than you, and we talk about this a lot. And we’re so driven by social media and celebrity, and that I think is a real, it’s a negative. It just is. It’s people who have access to a lot of things that most of us don’t. And is there a natural beauty in that? Is there a natural aging in that? I don’t think so. So how do we make this real me, the real Jen, the real Angela, something that you strive to be? This is who I am at almost 55 and I think I’m doing okay.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

It’s like, Jennifer, you were in my car with my 13-year-old daughter this morning talking about how she was telling me she doesn’t have any makeup on, and we were talking about how beautiful she is, and I started talking to her about if you wear makeup every day, it becomes the norm. You have to be beautiful with who you are. So you were in the car, talking to my [inaudible 00:26:32] girl this morning.

Jennifer Jones:

And it’s funny too, you think about somebody with a platform like a Jamie Lee Curtis, who is a proponent of say your age and of hair going gray. Sometimes your hair goes gray in your thirties, sometimes your hair doesn’t go gray, sometimes your hair goes gray in your seventies, whatever. It’s one of those individual components of aging over which we have no control. But I think the more of us that just, I think, really maybe find joy in being who we are at whatever age we are, the more we share that, the more we talk openly about it. Yes, your body changes. Yes, sometimes that can be annoying, but there are so many things I know now at almost 55 that I didn’t know at 25, and I will take this version of Jen over that version of Jen any day.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, we need more people saying that.

Jennifer Jones:

Yeah.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

I think, Lauren, I really appreciate you talking about your generation maybe thinking poorly about aging or not wanting to age, but when we put together, so there’s different aspects of this nonprofit, but when we put together the special events, one of the pieces of that vision of why we’re doing special events is to give youth and college students and high school students and even younger, a chance to have meaningful conversation with seniors so that they become less afraid of aging, less afraid of people that are getting older and that they don’t have something to offer, less afraid of getting into conversations with and seeing the seniors for who they are and what they have to offer and laughing with them.

And so we just think about all the learning that our community gets chance to do by connecting the youth with the seniors in some of these facilities. It’s been a beautiful, beautiful thing. And so while we look at thinkJOY and we think and hear the mission and the vision of it as it relates to working with seniors, really the vision too is connecting people and allowing that aging to become less scary and less negative impact. And you’ll see on our website through some of the videos, they’re very beautiful, joyful conversations and things that are happening, and people walk away like, oh, I don’t need to be afraid of that.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, it’s kind of like exposure therapy. The more often you’re exposed to it, the less scary something like that becomes, and you start to see the value and the wisdom, like you said, that it brings. So yeah, I think that’s really important. This is kind of along those same lines, but what do you guys think it means to truly age well or optimally? Is there something universal to it, or is it deeply individual? We’ve kind of touched on both of those aspects.

Jennifer Jones:

I think it’s a big combination of both. We use the phrase optimal aging, it’s in our mission, and that’s been the initiative that I’ve worked with for two and a half years, the Optimal Aging Initiative. And it’s interesting to me when we ask people, how are you optimally aging? Sometimes people freeze because they’ve never put the word optimal with aging. And then you have people who are just like, oh, I’m going to book club. I’m doing yoga, I socialize. They get it.

And I think something we say about optimal aging is that it doesn’t mean you are without a diagnosis or an autoimmune disease or a condition that you’re managing or monitoring, it means in spite of that or despite that, you’re doing everything you can to age well. And that yes, obviously is a physical component, but it’s again, addressing those social determinants of health. It’s your mental health, it’s your emotional health, it’s your spiritual health, it’s your financial health. Are you planning to age? One of the conversations we have consistently is people are not prepared to live to be 93, and that’s kind of where you should be planning to live, right, Lauren? That’s where we should all be planning to live.

Lauren Lavin:

I hope so.

Jennifer Jones:

You’re ready to be 93 or 103, because that’s a real possibility. So yes, I think there are things that we can all individually do. And Angela, with the fitness background, obviously movement and strength training, and I would say proprioception, because the older you get, the more you’re at risk for falls. So can you figure out where you’re at spatially and right yourself so you’re not a fall risk? But beyond that, those other components, kind of those other social determinants of health, how are you addressing those? And yeah, aging well incorporates a lot of different components.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, I think you touched on something. So my mom’s also, she’s a financial advisor, and so something she talks about a lot is you have to, and it’s really hard, there’s so many factors to saving money and I understand that, but when you stopped working at 65, when we set that as the retirement age, and I’m not a proponent for raising that, but we weren’t expecting to be living what might be 40 more years and not having income. And when we talk about social security, I am getting my PhD in health policy, and so that’s something that people are very concerned about.

Jennifer Jones:

Yes.

Lauren Lavin:

And then we look at the cost of nursing homes, especially if you don’t have a support system, those can be a hundred thousand dollars a year easily.

Jennifer Jones:

That’s average. Right now that is the average cost of long-term specialist skilled nursing. And something I didn’t say, we were talking about my journey, I have a mom who had a stroke at 67. She was able to rehab and go back home, and then she had another series of strokes and so she is in a skilled nursing facility a couple of hours away from here. And so that’s been a reality in my life, is this whole caregiving aspect of the cost of caregiving, unpaid caregivers, the knowledge that you have to have.

So I come back to that, are you planning to age? And all of those components that you need to be planning for are really important. And I think people want to age in place. Don’t we all want to age in our home and stay in our home. Great, but are you working with somebody like an Angela to stay strong, to stay mobile, to stay fit, to stay flexible, all of those good things? It’s good for your mental health also, but do you have doors that are wide enough for a walker or a wheelchair, or do you have a shower that’s zero entry? Or do you have the capability to make it that, because you probably will age into something and that’s just a reality? So planning is a big, for me personally, the word planning is huge.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

And I will say too, when you were talking about what does it mean to age well, if there’s universal elements, I do work with people that are either caretaking for themselves or they’re getting older and they’re living at home and they’re trying to stay strong and keep them in their home and those sorts of things, but sometimes one thing that’s missing from life can really trickle down to a large issue. For example, I work with a gentleman that’s extremely wealthy, but he is extremely lonely and doesn’t think that he matters to anybody. And that trickle-down effect of really not mattering encompasses his day, encompasses his mental health, his physical health, and the moment that he gets some sort of relief thinking that somebody cares for him, the more elevated he gets.

And so when you think about universal elements, I don’t know, it’s so hard. Social connection, having something meaningful happen to you each day, feeling like you matter, having your, obviously, physical and mental health in general. But man, life is a funny thing. And we always said you can’t have it all. But certainly, I don’t know, how do you put value on some of these things and what’s really more important? It’s really difficult. It really is difficult.

Lauren Lavin:

Someone will have one thing taken care of, but there’ll be a gaping hole somewhere else, and it can be just as impactful.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Absolutely, yeah.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

And I see it on so many different ends, and even me in my own aging, and I’ve worked for the university for a long time, so I feel like this university has done a really great job of helping me get set up so that I can age well and I can have good retirement. I don’t know about at those costs, but if other things that are missing, if there are those things missing that are really deeply painful, like not mattering, it doesn’t matter how much money you have in your pocket. So yeah, I just don’t know. What do I put as a priority and how do I help people fill those gaps of those other areas that is missing and that makes a big difference in their life?

Lauren Lavin:

So along those lines, then, you kind of identified some of those challenges to aging well, and what it looks like. What do you think are the critical supports that aging adults need to thrive emotionally, physically, socially? What do you think that looks like in an ideal society?

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah, I think that that’s where it becomes so individual. I really do. I think that while we might say socialization is really important, if I have a client that’s 81 that has high social anxiety and he’s never been in social settings very happy, but he has people telling him, you need to get out socially. I mean, I agree. I really like to be social, but at the same time, it’s very difficult for everybody. Everybody’s so different that it’s hard for me to put my finger on what is the most important. Yeah, what do you think, Jennifer?

Jennifer Jones:

And of course I’m like, okay, a social group, but that social group, maybe it’s one person. A social group doesn’t mean you have to be belle of the ball, you’re getting together with all 20 of your girlfriends every night. I think whatever that phrase social means to you, and I think Angela, coming back to social and how that matters to you.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah.

Jennifer Jones:

Do you have a strong group and a group, could it be two people, is it three, who make you feel like you matter and that also you recognize that you matter to them and that they matter to you? I think there’s that reciprocal relationship that’s really incredibly important. I think having meaning and value in life, there is so much to meaning and value, and we don’t talk about that because I think it’s kind of this vague concept. So how do we really put that into a hard measure?

But I will say too, we were talking earlier about intergenerational opportunities, and that’s where I think these can be so incredibly valuable. Having somebody in their late teens, early twenties, having the conversation with someone who’s lived for 70, 80, or 90 years, what an interesting opportunity for each of them to find value in another that’s so different yet so similar than themselves. Yeah, I do community engagement for my day job and at night I want to go home and just crawl into a hole and be by myself.

So I think, yeah, that word, social, and I think we’re really hypersensitive to social isolation post-COVID, I do think that was something good that came from COVID was awareness that social isolation really does play a part in the way we are aging, but in our general health. So that’s great, but what does that mean for each one of us individually?

Angela Charsha-Harney:

And I think I’m hypersensitive right now just because I sat in on a doctor appointment with one of my clients, and his doctor was, I wouldn’t say yelling at him, but his doctor was telling him, “You know that I talked to you about having to find ways for you to get social, and you should go downstairs and have dinner with people that live in this area, but you’re not making steps to do that.” And I just thought it’s such an unfair thing to say to somebody that might have social anxiety for their entire life. And two, it’s not easy as an 81-year-old to go downstairs and ask a group table of laughing 75-year-old women if he can join them for dinner. So I think I’m just really hypersensitive to that because I wanted to protect him in that moment. This is not him not complying, this just might not be what social means to him or meaning means to him, or that’s not necessarily going to make him feel better. So I’m very hypersensitive to that today.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s a great point.

Jennifer Jones:

That’s a great point.

Lauren Lavin:

And I think it doesn’t matter if you’re coming this from a public health perspective or from a caretaker provider perspective, I think that really highlights the individuality. We’re very quick to say, this is what everyone needs because that’s what the research shows or for providers is what they’ve been taught. But you in that moment, were like, oh my gosh, that’s the last thing that he needs to hear right now.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yeah, he’s not doing anything to help himself. And I was like, oh! Oh, it hurts my feelings.

Lauren Lavin:

And that can spiral them in a different direction, and so I think it just shows how individual this needs to be. Again, that comes back to having a support system that’s unique to you. How [inaudible 00:40:43] that he was able to have you there, Angela, even if you didn’t say anything in that moment, I’m sure you debriefed it afterwards or [inaudible 00:40:50] can provide support otherwise. On that note then, right, if you are in a support system or you want to be in a community for aging adults, how can families, friends, communities create more supportive and joyful environments for aging adults?

Jennifer Jones:

I think we have to start talking about it. I think, again, and I’m coming back to, my parents were the first year the baby boomers born in ’46 and 1947 respectfully, and they didn’t talk about what happened with their parents when their parents got old and now we’re experiencing it as my parents are aging. Open your mouth. We talk about this all the time. We started an adult child caregiver group. We’re not spouses, our people for whom we’re providing care, not all of them have dementia or Alzheimer’s, its just we are this kind of stuck in the middle sandwich generation, even if some of our kids are older but we’re providing care for people who don’t want to have a conversation about it because that’s just not what they know.

And I think about your 81-year-old, why didn’t that care provider, that doctor say, let’s talk about the things you are doing well. Why wasn’t there any twist on positivity? Why couldn’t we find that a positive thing that that person’s doing well and really highlighting that and being a cheerleader for that and saying, okay, that’s a great thing. Can you do a little bit more of that? Or what are those other things you’re doing that are good

Caregivers are interesting. I have people who will say, well, I didn’t know where to turn, so I just didn’t even ask. I think you’d be shocked if you opened your mouth and said, oh my gosh, here’s my situation. You could do this literally, at the end of yoga class, in your book club, at church, anywhere. You could probably do it in the grocery store and be like, “Okay, I’m a caregiver. I need help.” And somebody else would be like, “Oh yeah, I’m right there with you.” So many of us are experiencing it, but we seem to really keep it quiet and to ourselves, and this isn’t a quiet situation. This isn’t something we have to deal with individually behind closed doors. This is something where it’s a universal experience we’ll probably all go through, so why not have the, I don’t know, the courage to really start talking about these things openly.

Because I do think then, Lauren, it develops this network of people you never thought you would meet, people you never would have crossed paths with who are also in a similar situation, similar but different because every journey is different, but they have empathy for you. And they have suggestions, and it just feels good to get together and have shared stories and like-stories with other people.

So I think if I could encourage conversation, I think those kind of natural, organic support systems would start to develop, and that’s in your own family. Like I said, my mom’s first stroke, she was 67, and my kids, boy, we talk about things all the time now. And my dad and I talk about things that had you asked me 30 years ago, do you think you and your dad will ever talk about X, Y and Z? I would’ve said, oh, no. But we’ve learned we have to talk about it because it impacts his health, it impacts our health, it impacts us as a family structure and a family unit. So having the courage to have conversations with those around you, it’s amazing where that support rises from.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think I’m a first generation college student, so I always lean heavily into education was freedom for me for certain, and really not being afraid of diving into the education around aging and around living with dementia or other areas that people experience with aging. I mean, I don’t think without the gift of my client living with dementia and our connection, the gift of that relationship, I would have ever experienced understanding aging in the way that I do now.

And it’s through education. It was through research. It is through paying attention and opening my eyes and understanding what other families are going through. In fact, it was a beautiful thing because, one, it wasn’t my family so I could focus on the learning rather than having the emotions highly tied to it. And so I think it’s so easy to get wrapped up into the emotional trauma of living with people that are experiencing difficulties with aging and not really understanding maybe how we can react differently, how we can understand and listen differently, how you can respond differently. And so I just think, man, the more we can become educated, the more I think everybody will live so much happier as it relates to aging, for certain.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah. Absolutely. I second all of that. Just from listening, I think I’ve been learning so much.

Jennifer Jones:

You are optimally aging, Lauren. I love this.

Lauren Lavin:

Yes.

Jennifer Jones:

You’re in your twenties, and I think that’s really important, and again, I come back to we need to have more intergenerational activities and opportunities because you get to start thinking about these things in your twenties, and you get to hear from people who are not afraid of aging, and that aging is really kind of a cool thing, and what a luxury that we get to age. And I just wish everybody had that opportunity, I really do.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah.

Jennifer Jones:

And it’s great for the older adults to have that interchange and exchange of ideas and thoughts and just conversation with younger people too. It’s stimulating, so it’s good for everybody.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, it’s beneficial for all parties involved and, absolutely, I think about how as a community, we can facilitate more of those probably through nonprofits like thinkJOY, but it’s getting me thinking.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

Yes.

Jennifer Jones:

Public health will solve the world’s problems.

Angela Charsha-Harney:

One thing I was going to say too is as you get older, you sort of let go of a lot of the judgmental things that sort of carry you through your teens and twenties and that sort of thing. And I think even aging optimally and not being judgmental of how other people age because how I am aging and what I believe in and don’t believe in, especially as it relates to anti-aging stuff, or especially as it relates to Botox or any of those other things, my best friend is living incredibly different than me, and I need to learn to appreciate and love the way that she wants to age and the things that matter to her and not have any judgment to how somebody else ages.

And I think we all have to sort of let go and just, like you said, love yourself and love how you’re going to age and do what you can to age well, but definitely not being judgmental of what other people do as it relates to the way that they’re aging and the choices that they make amongst that.

Jennifer Jones:

That was beautifully said.

Lauren Lavin:

Yeah, and definitely a learned skill by being around people.

Jennifer Jones:

Yes, of course.

Lauren Lavin:

And listening to people like you, I think helps a lot.

Jennifer Jones:

Yeah, that’s good.

Lauren Lavin:

That’s it for part one of our conversation with Jennifer and Angela. Today we explored the origins of thinkJOY, the mission of the Csomay Center, and the ways joy and community support can change how we think about aging. We also challenged the narrative that aging is a deficit and started reframing it as an opportunity to grow, connect, and find purpose.

This episode was hosted and written by Lauren Lavin and edited and produced by Lauren Lavin. You can learn more about the University of Iowa College of Public Health on Facebook. Our podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and SoundCloud. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, a colleague, or even a family member who’s been thinking about aging in their own life.

Be sure to join us for part two where we’ll dive into caregiving, age-friendly health systems and lessons older adults can teach us about leadership, resilience, and joy. Until then, stay healthy, stay curious, and take care.