Older Americans Month: May 2022

The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) joins the nations in celebrating Older Americans Month, taking place the entire month of May 2022. SDAHO looks forward to providing resources and tools to our members that help older Americans stay healthy and thrive in their communities.

Every May, the Administration for Community Living (ACL) leads the nation’s observance of Older Americans Month (OAM). In 2022, ACL will be focusing on aging in place – how older adults can plan to stay in their homes and live independently in their communities for as long as possible. The 2022 theme is Age My Way, an opportunity for all of us to explore the many ways older adults can remain in and be involved with their communities.

Ideas to get you started:

• Arrange for older adults to share or read stories. Call a community center or group about a joint effort — perhaps they’d like older adults to share their experiences in a workshop. Alternatively, see if a local school would like to host a “Senior Day” where older adults speak to students, or contact libraries about older adults reading to young children.
• Arrange for local school students to interview older adults in the community and write short biographies. Plan a program at which the students read aloud their stories. Invite your local newspaper, blogger, or radio station to attend.
• Use video chat technology to host a storytelling party. Select a theme or question and give each person five minutes to tell a story that relates to it. Check out this Great Questions list from StoryCorps for ideas.
• Ask your social media followers to share their wisdom, tips, and stories online using a unique hashtag or by posting to a forum you manage. Be sure to provide guidance (e.g., length), what you’d most like to hear, and a contact person for questions.
• Organize a selfie challenge on social media. Create a theme phrase (e.g., “Aging my way means…”) and use a related hashtag (e.g., #OlderAmericansMonth, #AgeMyWay). Ask community members to fill in the blank and take a photo holding a paper with the sentence, and then post on social media using your hashtag. You can even design a simple template with the phrase that can be printed out to make it easier for to join in

To  learn more about ways to plan activities in and with your community, visit with ACL Activity Ideas webpage. 

To learn more about SDAHO’s long-term care Resources, visit our webpage.