Administration on Aging HIV and Aging Webinar June 14, 2011
in real dollars. Our research has for the last many years shown that this population doesn’t have good social networks.
We know they have parents, children, siblings, friends, whatever in the social network but when we look at their functionality they need to rely upon them for everything from a daily care issue to emotional support.
We find that only friends remain functional but sadly, of those friends half are HIV positive and half don’t even know the other half has HIV. It’s a fragile (unintelligible). Why is this important to us? Well, we’ve already begun working with - we actually just published a paper to show that because they don’t have a good social network, which are an important part of aging well successfully, they therefore turn to more formal services in large numbers. And that already they were entering long-term healthcare facilities at a very young age and at a very high cost.
So here’s the end. There is life after 50, there is as we are reminded by researchers, some of the work by (Dr. Lindale) as well as AARP who’s been very supportive on this in fact, that people have sex, have sexual desires till they can’t have it anymore. This is - everybody knows this but doesn’t want to acknowledge it.
So that, as I mentioned before, one in every six of new diagnoses in the U.S. is in a person age 50 and over. Why does this happen? I think Doreen and some of our other participants today are going to discuss this in more detail but most of it is a lack of awareness that you are at risk. Everyone is at risk no matter what age and there have been no tailored interventions aimed at this population and those that provide services to them.
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