By Mason Crane-Bolton
We know our blog posts are usually full of information on best practices and policy updates, geared toward showing how we can best serve our aging communities here in New Jersey—but today we’d like to shift gears, just a little bit.
As we wind down from our 21st Annual Conference, “The ‘How To’s for Aging Well,” we’d like to recap on our recent event and also provide some insight into what’s to come in the next few months here at NJFA!
This past Tuesday, June 4th, 2019, we held our 21st Annual Conference! This year’s conference, “The ‘How To’s for Aging Well,” highlighted a variety of sessions on relevant and important topics with titles such as—“How to Combat Ageism,” “How to Understand Mental Health,” “How to Better Serve LGBTQ Older Adults,” “How to Address Financial Health,” and more!
This year’s conference was a resounding success, with more than 250 participants, lively discussion, and countless opportunities for connection and growth! We are thrilled that this conference continues to thrive and are thankful we have the opportunity to host it each and every summer. We look forward to continuing to grow our conference year after year in order to provide more professionals in aging services with vital information, resources, and an opportunity to connect with others in the field. As next year brings new opportunities and challenges, we look forward to holding the conference once more—we can’t wait to see you there!
In case you missed it—Throughout the summer we will continue to air new episodes of Aging Insights! Some of our most recent episodes have included topics such as LGBT older adult health and outreach, Alzheimer’s awareness and caregiving, financial health, and utility assistance. This month’s episode (#93, Keep Your Body Balanced https://youtu.be/Bl2maFfgalo ) focuses on fall prevention—not only the physical and (often neglected) psychological effects associated with falls, but techniques to stay balanced as well. And stay tuned for fun topics this summer like making music and more!
In order to best serve the community, we’ve decided to make a few changes at NJFA. We’ll be providing more information on these changes over the summer and into the fall, but rest assured that all of our changes are designed to help us achieve a laser-like focus on the issues that matter and will help us make the biggest impact possible in creating a better environment within our state for our aging populations present and future.
Thank you all for making our work possible! And stay tuned for the next issue of Renaissance, which will be released early this summer, and information on upcoming workshops in the fall!
If you have feedback or would like to be part of the conversation, leave us a comment below or email us as office@njfoundationforaging.org.
Come back for our next blog! New posts are published on the first and third Thursdays of each month.
Mason Crane-Bolton is Communications Manager for the New Jersey Foundation for Aging. His writing has appeared in Epiphany, UU World, To Wake/To Rise, and others.