Aging, Communication, and Health

This collection highlights the current efforts by scholars and researchers to understand the aging process as it relates to the health of older adults. With contributions from international scholars in communication, psychology, public health, medicine, nursing, and other areas, this volume emphasizes communication as a critical research, education, policy, and practice issue for the design, provision, and evaluation of health and social services for older adults. Organized into sections addressing communication developments in the healthcare arena, issues in provider-patient communication, and the relationships between family communication and health. The chapters cover critical topics related to successful aging, such as Alzheimer's disease, managed care and older adults, communication issues of severe dementia, and healthcare decision-making within families. The editors have designed this volume to be accessible to a broad audience, including scholars and students of aging and communication, healthcare practitioners with older clients, and aging individuals and their families who are pursuing strategies for successful aging. The chapters represent the highest levels of current scholarship on communication, aging, and health, providing a strong foundation for future research. Each contribution also addresses the applied implications of this research, offering practical guidance to readers dealing with these issues in their own lives. As a whole, Aging, Communication, and Health represents a major advance toward understanding the importance and application of communication for successful aging.

"With its disciplinary diversity of authors, current empirical research findings, literature reviews, practical considerations and suggestions for future research, it is a scholarly, practical and very readable book, appealing to academics, practitioners, family members, and individual older persons. A welcome and important addition to the aging, health, and communication literature."—CHOICE"This is a fascinating piece of work of direct relevance to any health professional or student in contact with older people and issues surrounding the ageing process. It also holds some excellent insights for those interested in studying communicative relationships from a social and psychological perspective. This book makes a significant contribution toward a deeper understanding of the inter-relatedness of ageing, health and communication....It is an excellent example of how research on communication, ageing and health should contribute to and change current practice. It also exposes many areas requiring further research study and makes inspirational reading."—Quality in Ageing"Practitioners yearn for research that will do more than tell us what we already know from clinical experience, and will do so in a clear and accessible manner. Hummert and Nussbaum are to be applauded for challenging these communication experts to strive for a goal that few in the academic literature have achieved. The result is a book that contains considerable material of use to practitioners as well as other researchers..."—Contemporary Psychology"This is a book that has much to offer to many health-care professionals. When the existance of age discrimination is being acknowledged and challenged in health-care settings, it serves above all to demonstrate how stereotyping attitudes reveal themselves and are shaped through communication at a micro-level. The book would be a useful reader for a course in gerontology related to health care provision."—Ageing and Society"...the authors excel in creating a readable text that would be useful in numerous contexts ranging from courses in communication and aging to a resource for family members caring for an aging parent. To this end, although the collection itself is clearly directed towards those interested in the communicative intersections of aging and health, many chapters have wide appeal."—The Southern Communication Journal