Healthy Aging Interview

My interview was conducted over the phone, due to both of our busy schedules on 4/19/2016. I asked questions and typed his narrative while he spoke. I have gotten quite good at this due my current occupation as an SMI case manager. I am responsible for conducting in office interviews for service plans and yearly assessments for about three clients a week. My older person is a neighbor and friend of my parents who lives caddy corner to my parents and whose daughter is my sister’s best friend. My interviewee, Tom Cody will be 72 in August. Tom is a Caucasian male originally from Boston, who has been happily married to his wife Lynne Cody for 42 years. Tom and Lynne have one daughter named Erin who is about 30 years old. I choose Tom because …show more content…
“Healthy aging is a concept used alongside related concepts such as active aging, positive aging, and successful aging. Raftered Fäggren and Wilson (2009) define healthy aging as “the process of optimizing opportunities for physical, social and mental health to enable older people to take an active part in society without discrimination and to enjoy an independent and good quality of life (Naaldenberg et al.20012).” The way these different elements interact in the elder person’s life and their abilities to maintain a sense of identity, health, purpose and mental capacity are also going to be factors in their outlook on their aging process, for Tom all of these things are intact and he is enjoying his retirement and the freedoms and life changes it has afforded …show more content…
He displayed this in his motivation to be aware of issues that affect him or that he sees as injustices and then he takes actions to correct those injustices which he observes. He has strong feeling about supporting the elderly community that is not as fortunate as he is and he also sees the current state of politics as saddening, in that no other time in history have the two parties been so divided. He feels this is mainly because of the Republican parties’ refusal to compromise and work to find solutions with the Democratic Party. Tom has been voting for over fifty years and he is very disappointment in what our current government and elections has turned into. He uses him knowledge and time to help out elderly people through his involvement in the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). On the foundations website it gives information on politics that effect retired persons and has volunteer opportunities to help others over 50 who are struggling. Tom also writes to his congressman about these issues. Tom strives to support the things he believes will help our government get back to being what it was established to be, a government of the people, for the people. These are the two main reasons that I feel empowerment is a central theme in his dealings with the social, political and historical changes