“Adding Life to Years” Dr. Larry Weiss Center for Healthy Aging
Elders Count Nevada
2021
B
ack in 2007 I was the Director of the Sanford Center for Aging at UNR and I created a data book on elders in Nevada – Elders Count. It was based on a model program – Kids Count, which was in every state. Elders Count was done for Nevada again in 2009 and 2013. Unfortunately, to my knowledge to this day no Larry Weiss U.S. states are doing it like Kids Count, which is still being done in every state! Just this past month the Nevada Aging and Disability Services Division (ADSD) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) announced the release of a new Elders Count Nevada 2021, a comprehensive document that includes as much validated data from authoritative sources on Nevada elders and provides recommendations to support state and local services. ADSD, the DHHS Office of Analytics, the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) School of Medicine, Office of Statewide Initiatives, and the Center for Healthy Aging all contributed to this collaborative report that utilizes data from authoritative sources on Nevada’s senior population. The report contains data on key topics including population, economics, health status, health risks and behaviors, health care, and infrastructure, with a subsection on workforce related to elder care. Each section includes data highlights as well as descriptive analysis of the data charts. This report is supplemented by an online Elders Count Dashboard with additional data elements for analysis. Elders Count Nevada 2021 and the dashboard can be found on the ADSD website. In addition, ADSD has committed to produce the report bi-annually. Nevada’s population of older adults (439,000 based on 2018 data) continues to grow at a rapid rate, with the population age 85 and older increasing at a rate that is double the U.S. growth rate of the same age group. Nevada will continue to see higher growth rates in the population of older adults as compared to the rest of the U.S. These trends are expected to last into 2030. The growth of the age 55 to 64 continues to increase and will impact available human service resources. The report also shows that Nevada’s older adults’ health status is lower than the U.S. rate in critical areas based on data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Couple this with continued workforce shortages and the growing population, Nevada is at a pivotal point to ensure older adults are aging healthy. (Elders Count page 10) www.SeniorSpectrumNewspapers.com // March 2021
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