Katie Sloan, AAHSA's Consumer Focus Blogger

Katie Sloan, AAHSA's Consumer Focus Blogger

Everybody’s interested in baby boomers these days. And I should know, I am one.

Retailers and vacation planners want to sell us things. The government is worried about how much it will cost to keep us healthy and financially secure as we age. And providers of long-term services and supports are wondering how our needs and preferences will change their work.

Why the interest? Partly, it’s because our generation is so big. There are 78 million of us, who were born between 1946 and 1964. Face it, a generation that size is bound to leave its mark on society. And that impact isn’t going to stop as we age.

The media tells us that we are fighting the aging process. But I’d like to believe that, instead, we are fighting the status quo and stereotypes about old age. We are challenging social norms because when we reach our later years, we want a different reality than our parents and grandparents experienced.

How will we approach our own old age? What are our dreams and our needs? At AAHSA, we want to know the answers to these questions.. We want to know what boomers will expect from our not-for-profit members and what we can do to help them meet those expectations. We read a host of studies that speculate about consumer preferences over the next few decades and summarized the findings in our Consumer Research Digest.

Now, we’d like to talk directly with baby boomers – and to listen carefully to what you think it will take to achieve the kind of healthy, independent, fulfilling and exciting old age that we all want.

Join me here each Monday to participate in what I hope will be a lively conversation about the kind of aging experience we imagine for ourselves – and how we can work together to make that dream a reality.