Gerontology in Family and Consumer Sciences: Where do We Go From Here?

If you weren’t able to listen to our webinar today on Gerontology in Family and Consumer Sciences: Where do We Go From Here?, no worries, you can still catch it on our recorded webinars page.  What I want to share a little more about is about the grey literature search that was done to seek out what other states are doing in the areas of

• Ageism
• Resiliency in Aging
• Purposeful Aging

I am sure that the search was not all encompassing of efforts within states however it did give us a lens to look through and place to start a conversation.   I too know that this search isn’t an exhaustive search or an all-inclusive search because the Illinois Extension website doesn’t include all of the programs that Illinois offers.  So, understand that for a quick snapshot, this is what was found in programming, blogs, handouts, general information covered on websites:

Ageism was the least covered with only nine states covering, teaching or talking about ageism.  However, when looking for resiliency, it was much more widely covered for resiliency in children, in families and in communities.  However, when you look for resiliency in aging, there search results became much smaller, totaling only in seven states having hits on something with resiliency in aging.  And the final search was in Purposeful aging or aging and purpose.  This too wasn’t too fruitful and only produced seven hits but if we add in volunteerism which often goes along with purpose, we added in six additional states.

Of all the things we discussed today in our program, these are just some of the gaps that we see in our programming within Extension. We had great sharing during our webinar about programs that are occurring across our country and areas we hope to expand in the future.  Hopefully, you can take a moment to listen in and join the conversation. Feel free to comment to share what you are doing in your neck of the woods in these areas.  We would appreciate hearing from you!