Active aging: Older Utahns experiencing 'new landscape of life'

We are about to enter the Century of Aging.

Expect its impact to be bigger, more widespread, more monumental that you ever imagined, says Scott D. Wright, director of the Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Utah's College of Nursing.

"The first of the baby boomers, who are the leading edge of the trend, hit the magic number of 65 next year. That will signal the official demographic transition," he says.

Just when the biggest impact hits you, however, will depend a lot on where you live. "Some counties in Florida are already dealing with it now. In some counties, the population of people 65 and older is now 20 percent."

In Utah, Salt Lake and Washington counties will feel the impact before some of the others.

Utah, he says, "is considered a 'younger' state. We have so many kids that it skews in their favor, unfairly, I think. Utah is the fifth fastest-growing state in terms of older adults. So, we are going to experience the transition in a more rapid way than most."

It is imperative that we prepare for these changes now, that we prepare people not only to deal with the issues, but to take leadership roles, he says. That's the focus of the Gerontology Interdisciplinary Program.

The key description of the program is that word "interdisciplinary," he says. "Aging is an experience that falls under many different disciplines. It is biological. It is psychological. It is sociological. On campus, we think that every major or field will intersect with aging at some point. We stress to our students that it is not just one box. Engineers must design roads and highways that take into consideration an aging population. Computer programmers must design for an aging society. Maybe you've heard of an 'age wave'? This will be an 'age tsunami.'"

To call attention to some of these issues — and the potential career paths they offer — the gerontology program is participating this week in national Careers in Aging Week, with a series of events open to students, potential students and the general public, including those in the aging demographic.

Aging issues affect us all, Wright says. As they look ahead, many people see only the number of baby boomers and are worried that they will capsize the system, particularly in entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. Wright is more optimistic than most.