110 Years from Pathé…Zoom – It’s InTALKsicating!
Almost three months on Zoom – webinars, interviews, town hall meetings, and such; and I decided early on that I would need a format to digest and share what I learned, which made me think that I should follow the path of Charles Pathé who created the Newsreel format around 1910. For well over fifty years, newsreel films came before a featured film in local cinemas, an omnibus of current affairs, information and propaganda.
In this third episode of my ZoomReel, I share a few more highlights from the Global Town Hall sessions presented by the International Federation on Ageing (IFA) over May and June 2020, where the focus has been on the COVID-19 Global Effects on Older People.
Before that, I would strongly suggest a great fast read, sort of a digest of commentary from the Gerontology Research Centre (GRC) at Simon Fraser University. Their Summer-2020 Covid-19 Special Issue just flew in through the transom window – Risk, response, and resilience in an aging covid-19 world.
Here there are twenty-two short pieces covering seven topic areas including Long-term Care, Diversity and families, and Mental Health, all written by faculty, research staff, graduate students, student alumni and invited older adults.
As Andrew Wister – Director of the GRC says in his introduction; “Two themes run through these pieces—first, the need to think about how COVID-19 social problems have exposed a myriad of issues that will require our attention as we move beyond this pandemic; and second, the amazing ability of people and communities to coalesce around these challenges.”
Tying this back to the IFA Town Hall meetups over the last seven weeks, the topics ranged from COVID, Facts and Fiction in Communication to COVID, as A Threat to Person-centered Care. For this ZoomReel I will highlight two in particular.
On May 15th, Graeme Prior from Australia shared that country’s Lessons Learned in the Long-term Care Setting. Mr. Prior is an Officer of the IFA and also, CEO of Hall & Prior – Health and Aged Care Group who is a strong supporter of the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission set up in 2018. For over 25 years, he has been highly engaged with Australia’s older adult community, government, industry members, nursing and healthcare professionals to identify sector trends and influence the delivery of improved care service outcomes.
During this session, Prior spoke of the overall social change needed in caregiving, calling for better recognition of the value of workers in the care profession, and the fact that the design of long-term care facilities and building codes should be part of our examination. It was good to hear how Australia took a proactive, collaborative approach to the COVID lock-down, making for a comparative story to our own in Canada. Needless to say, the over 140 people on this Town Hall were eager to learn and asked for more.
More recently on June 12 came Peggy Edwards, co-founder of the Grandmothers Advocacy Network (GRAN) – a non-partisan group of volunteers from across Canada advocating internationally for the human rights of grandmothers, vulnerable children and youth of sub-Saharan Africa.
Edwards drew attention to the multiple issues such as physical distancing, which have had an impact on Grandparenting in a Pandemic. As she pointed out, western care cultures differ from those in low-income countries such as in Africa. While physical distancing and how the caregiving role of grandparents has been hindered by COVID is a top of mind conversation in Canada, in the larger picture, what has been exposed are the global inequalities where COVID overlaps with other issues like poverty and lack of vaccines for other diseases.
Access to a great global knowledge exchange with others around the world is one of the benefits of belonging as a member of the IFA. I look forward to the next round of Town Hall meetups because what the world needs now is more awareness and understanding of aging and longevity issues and connecting with others. Reaching out on Zoom and other platforms does not replace our face-to-face inter-personal connectivity, but at least for me, it surely is the next best thing.