AARP Hearing Center
About
Too often, older adults feel overlooked or dismissed in health care settings — their concerns brushed aside, their voices unheard. AARP is working to change that by partnering with health professionals to confront ageism and shift the culture of care. At the heart of this transformation is the age-friendly 4Ms framework: What Matters — ensuring care aligns with each person’s goals and values; Medication — optimizing treatment for safety and simplicity; Mind — supporting brain health and emotional well-being; and Mobility — promoting independence and preventing avoidable harms. By centering these four evidence-based elements, we create a system that sees the whole person, not just their diagnosis — one where older adults are treated with the respect, dignity, and attention they deserve.
AARP and IHI Age-friendly Health: My Health Checklist
Centering age-friendly health care is a direct and powerful way to confront ageism in the health system. To that end, AARP recently collaborated with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Age-friendly Health team on the implementation of a new resource, My Health Checklist, a guide to help older adults prepare for medical appointments. My Health Checklist is an Age-Friendly Health Systems resource for older adults, made possible through funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation.
With IHI, we led a Community of Practice composed of a dozen health organizations that wanted to learn how to integrate this guide into their practice – how to share it with older adults (and their caregivers as applicable). The participants workshopped ways of introducing the guide to both members of their teams as well as with older adults. Key learnings included effective ways to get buy-in by staff was to ask them to fill it out themselves – getting them to see the value of the guide for themselves and the older adults in their lives led to quick adoption of the guide and appreciation for elevating the importance of the older adult’s priorities and values.
The following are the reflections from health professionals from 2 of the participating organizations.