Sociology & the Culture of Aging
Challenging the assumption that medical conditions are the prime drivers of older people’s needs: a qualitative baseline study about the experienced needs of older people who age in place with COPD
Publication Type: Peer-reviewed qualitative interview study
Publication Date: June 26, 2026
Author(s): Bergschöld, Bechmann Granås, Bergh, Dyrendal Høgset — SINTEF Digital / Innlandet Hospital Trust, Norway
Source Link: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-026-07800-4
Summary: This study interviewed older adults with COPD who are aging in place in rural Norway, originally recruited based on their diagnosis, but encouraged to describe their broader everyday challenges and needs.
Abstract Summary: While participants did share some COPD-related challenges, most of what they considered important to solve had more to do with the general everyday experience of aging in a rural community than with their medical condition itself — challenging the common practice of designing technology and services around diagnosis alone.
For Kansas Providers: Directly applicable to Kansas program design: when recruiting older adults into condition-specific programming (e.g., COPD or diabetes self-management, telehealth pilots), this suggests the everyday realities of rural aging — transportation, isolation, home upkeep — may shape engagement and need more than the diagnosis used to recruit them.
Aging self-stereotypes and associated factors among elderly patients with multimorbidity undergoing elective surgery: a cross-sectional study
Publication Type: Peer-reviewed cross-sectional study
Publication Date: June 23, 2026
Author(s): Li, Tan, Hu, Li, Luo, Li — Chongqing Medical University, China
Source Link: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-026-07840-w
Summary: Researchers surveyed 188 older surgical patients with multiple chronic conditions to measure how strongly they held negative internalized beliefs about aging, and what predicted higher levels of that self-stereotyping.
Abstract Summary: Patients scored relatively high on internalized aging stereotypes overall; having surgery for the first time, a heavier chronic illness burden, and a passive (rather than active) role in care decisions were all independently linked to stronger self-stereotyping, together explaining about half the variation.
For Kansas Providers: Internalized ageism shaping a patient’s own recovery expectations is relevant to any Kansas direct-care or clinical staff preparing older patients for procedures. The link to passive decision-making supports building shared decision-making conversations into pre-surgical and care-planning protocols as a concrete way to counter self-stereotyping.
Holistic well-being of older adults as a multidimensional system based on life experiences in the context of urban Indonesia
Publication Type: Peer-reviewed qualitative study
Publication Date: June 29, 2026
Author(s): Rahmah, Palutturi, Ibnu, Stang, Hadju, Afandi — Hasanuddin University, Indonesia
Source Link: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-026-07864-2
Summary: Through 45 in-depth interviews with older adults in Makassar City, researchers built a layered model of what “holistic wellbeing” actually means to older adults outside the high-income-country contexts that most healthy-aging frameworks are built from.
Abstract Summary: The resulting model organizes wellbeing into four layers — enabling conditions (physical function, financial security), engagement pathways (social participation, productive activity, learning), a mediating core (spiritual life, family-centered happiness, social embeddedness), and the subjective outcome of psychological serenity — emphasizing lived experience and relational interdependence over purely clinical metrics.
For Kansas Providers: A useful cross-cultural counterpoint for Kansas organizations building culturally responsive programming. The framework’s emphasis on family-centered happiness and social embeddedness alongside physical and financial security offers a broader lens than typical US healthy-aging metrics — useful for CE programming on holistic, person-centered models of wellbeing.
