Children with traumatic experiences have a higher risk of obesity – but this can be turned around
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Children with traumatic experiences in their early lives have a higher risk of obesity. But as our new research shows, this risk can be reduced through positive experiences.
Childhood traumatic experiences are alarmingly common. Our analysis of data from nearly 5,000 children in the Growing Up in New Zealand study revealed almost nine out of ten (87%) faced at least one significant source of trauma by the time they were eight years old. Multiple adverse experiences were also prevalent, with one in three children (32%) experiencing at least three traumatic events.
Childhood trauma includes a range of experiences such as physical and emotional abuse, peer bullying and exposure to domestic violence. It also includes parental substance abuse, mental illness, incarceration, separation or divorce and ethnic discrimination.
We found children from financially disadvantaged households and Māori and Pasifika had the highest prevalence of nearly all types of adverse experiences, as well as higher overall numbers of adversities.
The consequences of these experiences were far-reaching. Children who experienced at least one adverse event were twice as likely to be obese by age eight. The risk increased with the number of traumatic experiences. Children with four or more adverse experiences were nearly three times more likely to be obese.
Notably, certain traumatic experiences (including physical abuse and parental domestic violence) related more strongly to obesity than others. This highlights the strong connection between early-life adversity and physical health outcomes.
Connecting trauma to obesity
One potential explanation could be that the accumulation of early stress in children’s family, school and social environments is associated with greater psychological distress. This in turn makes children more likely to adopt unhealthy weight-related behaviours.
This includes consuming excessive high-calorie “comfort” foods such as fast food and sugary drinks, inadequate intake of nutritious foods, poor sleep, excessive screen time and physical inactivity. In our research, children who experienced adverse events were more likely to adopt these unhealthy behaviours. These, in turn, were associated with a higher risk of obesity.
Despite these challenges, our research also explored a promising area: the protective and mitigating effects of positive experiences.
We defined positive experiences as:
- parents in a committed relationship
- mothers interacting well with their children
- mothers involved in social groups
- children engaged in enriching experiences and activities such as visiting libraries or museums and participating in sports and community events
- children living in households with routines and rules, including those regulating bedtime, screen time and mealtimes
- children attending effective early childhood education.
The findings were encouraging. Children with more positive experiences were significantly less likely to be obese by age eight.
For example, those with five or six positive experiences were 60% less likely to be overweight or obese compared to children with zero or one positive experience. Even two positive experiences reduced the likelihood by 25%.
How positive experiences counteract trauma
Positive experiences can help mitigate the negative effects of childhood trauma. But a minimum of four positive experiences was required to significantly counteract the impact of adverse events.
While nearly half (48%) of the study participants had at least four positive experiences, a concerning proportion (more than one in ten children) reported zero or only one positive experience.
The implications are clear. Traditional weight-loss programmes focused solely on changing behaviours are not enough to tackle childhood obesity. To create lasting change, we must also address the social environments, life experiences and emotional scars of early trauma shaping children’s lives.
Fostering positive experiences is a vital part of this holistic approach. These experiences not only help protect children from the harmful effects of adversity but also promote their overall physical and mental wellbeing. This isn’t just about preventing obesity – it’s about giving children the foundation to thrive and reach their full potential.
Creating supportive environments for vulnerable children
Policymakers, schools and families all have a role to play. Community-based programmes, such as after-school activities, healthy relationship initiatives and mental health services should be prioritised to support vulnerable families.
Trauma-informed care is crucial, particularly for children from disadvantaged households who face higher levels of adversity and fewer positive experiences. Trauma-informed approaches are especially crucial for addressing the effects of domestic violence and other adverse childhood experiences.
Comprehensive strategies should prioritise both safety and emotional healing by equipping families with tools to create safe, nurturing environments and providing access to mental health services and community support initiatives.
At the family level, parents can establish stable routines, participate in social networks and engage children in enriching activities. Schools and early-childhood education providers also play a key role in fostering supportive environments that help children build resilience and recover from trauma.
Policymakers should invest in resources that promote positive experiences across communities, addressing inequalities that leave some children more vulnerable than others. By creating nurturing environments, we can counterbalance the impacts of trauma and help children lead healthier, more fulfilling lives.
When positive experiences outweigh negative ones, children have a far greater chance of thriving – physically, emotionally and socially.
Ladan Hashemi, Senior Research Fellow in Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Edamame vs Green Beans – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing edamame to green beans, we picked the edamame.
Why?
It wasn’t close:
In terms of macros, edamame has more than 5x the protein and nearly 2x the fiber, for approximately the same carbs, winning the first round.
In the category of vitamins, edamame has more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B7, B9, and E, while green beans have more of vitamins C and K, giving a compelling 8:2 win to edamame here.
Looking at minerals, edamame has more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while green beans are not higher in any minerals, allowing edamame to sweep this category easily.
Adding up the sections makes for an overwhelming overall win to edamame, but by all means do enjoy either or both, as diversity is best!
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Why You Can’t Skimp On Amino Acids ← edamame is a good source of all essential amino acids
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How Your Brain Chooses What To Remember
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During the day, your brain is simply too busy to encode memories without interfering with normal processing. At night, however…
The filing system
The brain decides which memories to keep based on significance, using sharp brain wave ripples as an internal bookmarking system. Everyday memories fade, while important events are tagged in this manner for consolidation during sleep.
How does it do this? It starts in the hippocampus, which records experiences during wakefulness and replays them repeatedly at high speed during sleep, preparing them for transfer to the neocortex.
How do we know? Uniform Manifold Approximation & Projection (UMAP) for dimension reduction is a tool that condenses 400-dimensional neural activity data into 3D for visualization. Mice navigating a maze showed hippocampal activity encoding location and learning progression; it also showed neural patterns reflecting maze layout and task mastery.
What this means in practical terms: you need to get good sleep if you don’t want to lose your memories!
For more on all of this, enjoy:
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How To Boost Your Memory Immediately (Without Supplements)
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If You’re Poor, Fertility Treatment Can Be Out of Reach
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Mary Delgado’s first pregnancy went according to plan, but when she tried to get pregnant again seven years later, nothing happened. After 10 months, Delgado, now 34, and her partner, Joaquin Rodriguez, went to see an OB-GYN. Tests showed she had endometriosis, which was interfering with conception. Delgado’s only option, the doctor said, was in vitro fertilization.
“When she told me that, she broke me inside,” Delgado said, “because I knew it was so expensive.”
Delgado, who lives in New York City, is enrolled in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for low-income and disabled people. The roughly $20,000 price tag for a round of IVF would be a financial stretch for lots of people, but for someone on Medicaid — for which the maximum annual income for a two-person household in New York is just over $26,000 — the treatment can be unattainable.
Expansions of work-based insurance plans to cover fertility treatments, including free egg freezing and unlimited IVF cycles, are often touted by large companies as a boon for their employees. But people with lower incomes, often minorities, are more likely to be covered by Medicaid or skimpier commercial plans with no such coverage. That raises the question of whether medical assistance to create a family is only for the well-to-do or people with generous benefit packages.
“In American health care, they don’t want the poor people to reproduce,” Delgado said. She was caring full-time for their son, who was born with a rare genetic disorder that required several surgeries before he was 5. Her partner, who works for a company that maintains the city’s yellow cabs, has an individual plan through the state insurance marketplace, but it does not include fertility coverage.
Some medical experts whose patients have faced these issues say they can understand why people in Delgado’s situation think the system is stacked against them.
“It feels a little like that,” said Elizabeth Ginsburg, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School who is president-elect of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a research and advocacy group.
Whether or not it’s intended, many say the inequity reflects poorly on the U.S.
“This is really sort of standing out as a sore thumb in a nation that would like to claim that it cares for the less fortunate and it seeks to do anything it can for them,” said Eli Adashi, a professor of medical science at Brown University and former president of the Society for Reproductive Endocrinologists.
Yet efforts to add coverage for fertility care to Medicaid face a lot of pushback, Ginsburg said.
Over the years, Barbara Collura, president and CEO of the advocacy group Resolve: The National Infertility Association, has heard many explanations for why it doesn’t make sense to cover fertility treatment for Medicaid recipients. Legislators have asked, “If they can’t pay for fertility treatment, do they have any idea how much it costs to raise a child?” she said.
“So right there, as a country we’re making judgments about who gets to have children,” Collura said.
The legacy of the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, when states passed laws that permitted poor, nonwhite, and disabled people to be sterilized against their will, lingers as well.
“As a reproductive justice person, I believe it’s a human right to have a child, and it’s a larger ethical issue to provide support,” said Regina Davis Moss, president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, an advocacy group.
But such coverage decisions — especially when the health care safety net is involved — sometimes require difficult choices, because resources are limited.
Even if state Medicaid programs wanted to cover fertility treatment, for instance, they would have to weigh the benefit against investing in other types of care, including maternity care, said Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “There is a recognition about the primacy and urgency of maternity care,” she said.
Medicaid pays for about 40% of births in the United States. And since 2022, 46 states and the District of Columbia have elected to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months, up from 60 days.
Fertility problems are relatively common, affecting roughly 10% of women and men of childbearing age, according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Traditionally, a couple is considered infertile if they’ve been trying to get pregnant unsuccessfully for 12 months. Last year, the ASRM broadened the definition of infertility to incorporate would-be parents beyond heterosexual couples, including people who can’t get pregnant for medical, sexual, or other reasons, as well as those who need medical interventions such as donor eggs or sperm to get pregnant.
The World Health Organization defined infertility as a disease of the reproductive system characterized by failing to get pregnant after a year of unprotected intercourse. It terms the high cost of fertility treatment a major equity issue and has called for better policies and public financing to improve access.
No matter how the condition is defined, private health plans often decline to cover fertility treatments because they don’t consider them “medically necessary.” Twenty states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring health plans to provide some fertility coverage, but those laws vary greatly and apply only to companies whose plans are regulated by the state.
In recent years, many companies have begun offering fertility treatment in a bid to recruit and retain top-notch talent. In 2023, 45% of companies with 500 or more workers covered IVF and/or drug therapy, according to the benefits consultant Mercer.
But that doesn’t help people on Medicaid. Only two states’ Medicaid programs provide any fertility treatment: New York covers some oral ovulation-enhancing medications, and Illinois covers costs for fertility preservation, to freeze the eggs or sperm of people who need medical treatment that will likely make them infertile, such as for cancer. Several other states also are considering adding fertility preservation services.
In Delgado’s case, Medicaid covered the tests to diagnose her endometriosis, but nothing more. She was searching the internet for fertility treatment options when she came upon a clinic group called CNY Fertility that seemed significantly less expensive than other clinics, and also offered in-house financing. Based in Syracuse, New York, the company has a handful of clinics in upstate New York cities and four other U.S. locations.
Though Delgado and her partner had to travel more than 300 miles round trip to Albany for the procedures, the savings made it worthwhile. They were able do an entire IVF cycle, including medications, egg retrieval, genetic testing, and transferring the egg to her uterus, for $14,000. To pay for it, they took $7,000 of the cash they’d been saving to buy a home and financed the other half through the fertility clinic.
She got pregnant on the first try, and their daughter, Emiliana, is now almost a year old.
Delgado doesn’t resent people with more resources or better insurance coverage, but she wishes the system were more equitable.
“I have a medical problem,” she said. “It’s not like I did IVF because I wanted to choose the gender.”
One reason CNY is less expensive than other clinics is simply that the privately owned company chooses to charge less, said William Kiltz, its vice president of marketing and business development. Since the company’s beginning in 1997, it has become a large practice with a large volume of IVF cycles, which helps keep prices low.
At this point, more than half its clients come from out of state, and many earn significantly less than a typical patient at another clinic. Twenty percent earn less than $50,000, and “we treat a good number who are on Medicaid,” Kiltz said.
Now that their son, Joaquin, is settled in a good school, Delgado has started working for an agency that provides home health services. After putting in 30 hours a week for 90 days, she’ll be eligible for health insurance.
One of the benefits: fertility coverage.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
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Junk Food Turns Public Villain as Power Shifts in Washington
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The new Trump administration could be coming for your snacks.
For years, the federal government has steered clear of regulating junk food, fast food, and ultra-processed food.
Now attitudes are changing. Some members of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle are gearing up to battle “Big Food,” or the companies that make most of the food and beverages consumed in the United States. Nominees for top health agencies are taking aim at ultra-processed foods that account for an estimated 70% of the nation’s food supply. Based on recent statements, a variety of potential politically charged policy options to regulate ultra-processed food may land on the Trump team menu, including warning labels, changes to agribusiness subsidies, and limits on which products consumers can buy with government food aid.
The push to reform the American diet is being driven largely by conservatives who have taken up the cause that has long been a darling of the left. Trump supporters such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services still faces Senate confirmation, are embracing a concept that champions natural foods and alternative medicine. It’s a movement they’ve dubbed “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again. Their interest has created momentum because their goals have fairly broad bipartisan support even amid a bitterly divided Congress in which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle focused on the issue last year.
It’s likely to be a pitched battle because the food industry wields immense political influence and has successfully thwarted previous efforts to regulate its products or marketing. The category of “food processing and sales companies,” which includes Tyson Foods and Nestle SA, tallied $26.7 million in spending on lobbying in 2024, according to OpenSecrets. That’s up from almost $10 million in 1998.
“They have been absolutely instrumental and highly, highly successful at delaying any regulatory effectiveness in America,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “It really does feel like there needs to be a moment of reckoning here where people start asking the question, ‘Why do we have to live like this?’”
“Ultra-processed food” is a widely used term that means different things to different people and is used to describe items ranging from sodas to many frozen meals. These products often contain added fats, starches, and sugars, among other things. Researchers say consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked — in varying levels of intensity — to chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, mental health problems, and early death.
Nutrition and health leaders are optimistic that a reckoning is already underway. Kennedy has pledged to remove processed foods from school lunches, restrict certain food additives such as dyes in cereal, and shift federal agricultural subsidies away from commodity crops widely used in ultra-processed foods.
The intensifying focus in Washington has triggered a new level of interest on the legal front as lawyers explore cases to take on major foodmakers for selling products they say result in chronic disease.
Bryce Martinez, now 18, filed a lawsuit in December against almost a dozen foodmakers such as Kraft Heinz, The Coca-Cola Co., and Nestle USA. He developed diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by age 16, and is seeking to hold them accountable for his illnesses. According to the suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the companies knew or should have known ultra-processed foods were harmful and addictive.
The lawsuit noted that Martinez grew up eating heavily advertised, brand-name foods that are staples of the American diet — sugary soft drinks, Cheerios and Lucky Charms, Skittles and Snickers, frozen and packaged dinners, just to name a few.
Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Heinz didn’t return emails seeking comment for this article. The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association for makers of consumer packaged goods, disputed the allegations.
“Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy, in a statement.
Other law firms are on the hunt for children or adults who believe they were harmed by consuming ultra-processed foods, increasing the likelihood of lawsuits.
One Indiana personal injury firm says on its website that “we are actively investigating ultra processed food (UPF) cases.” Trial attorneys in Texas also are looking into possible legal action against the federal regulators they say have failed to police ultra-processed foods.
“If you or your child have suffered health problems that your doctor has linked directly to the consumption of ultra-processed foods, we want to hear your story,” they say on their website.
Meanwhile, the FDA on Jan. 14 announced it is proposing to require a front-of-package label to appear on most packaged foods to make information about a food’s saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content easily visible to consumers.
And on Capitol Hill, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are sounding the alarm over ultra-processed food. Sanders introduced legislation in 2024 that could lead to a federal ban on junk food advertising to children, a national education campaign, and labels on ultra-processed foods that say the products aren’t recommended for children. Booker cosigned the legislation along with Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a December hearing examining links between ultra-processed food and chronic disease during which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf called for more funding for research.
Food companies have tapped into “the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction,” Califf said at the hearing.
Sanders, who presided over the hearing, said there’s “growing evidence” that “these foods are deliberately designed to be addictive,” and he asserted that ultra-processed foods have driven epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and hundreds of billions of dollars in medical expenses.
Research on food and addiction “has accumulated to the point where it’s reached a critical mass,” said Kelly Brownell, an emeritus professor at Stanford who is one of the editors of a scholarly handbook on the subject.
Attacks from three sides — lawyers, Congress, and the incoming Trump administration, all seemingly interested in taking up the fight — could lead to enough pressure to challenge Big Food and possibly spur better health outcomes in the U.S., which has the lowest life expectancy among high-income countries.
“Maybe getting rid of highly processed foods in some things could actually flip the switch pretty quickly in changing the percentage of the American public that are obese,” said Robert Redfield, a virologist who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the previous Trump administration, in remarks at a December event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Claims that Big Food knowingly manufactured and sold addictive and harmful products resemble the claims leveled against Big Tobacco before the landmark $206 billion settlement was reached in 1998.
“These companies allegedly use the tobacco industry’s playbook to target children, especially Black and Hispanic children, with integrated marketing tie-ins with cartoons, toys, and games, along with social media advertising,” Rene Rocha, one of the lawyers at Morgan & Morgan representing Martinez, told KFF Health News.
The 148-page Martinez lawsuit against foodmakers draws from documents made public in litigation against tobacco companies that owned some of the biggest brands in the food industry.
Similar allegations were made against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers before they agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars in a 2021 settlement with states.
The FDA ultimately put restrictions on the labeling and marketing of tobacco, and the opioid epidemic led to legislation that increased access to lifesaving medications to treat addiction.
But the Trump administration’s zeal in taking on Big Food may face unique challenges.
The ability of the FDA to impose regulation is hampered in part by funding. While the agency’s drug division collects industry user fees, its division of food relies on a more limited budget determined by Congress.
Change can take time because the agency moves at what some critics call a glacial pace. Last year, the FDA revoked a regulation allowing brominated vegetable oil in food products. The agency determined in 1970 that the additive was not generally recognized as safe.
Efforts to curtail the marketing of ultra-processed food could spur lawsuits alleging that any restrictions violate commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. And Kennedy — if he is confirmed as HHS secretary — may struggle to get support from a Republican-led Congress that champions less federal regulation and a president-elect who during his previous term served fast food in the White House.
“The question is, will RFK be able to make a difference?” said David L. Katz, a doctor who founded True Health Initiative, a nonprofit group that combats public health misinformation. “No prior administration has done much in this space, and RFK is linked to a particularly anti-regulatory administration.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. population is recognized as among the most obese in the world and has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions among high-income countries.
“There is a big grassroots effort out there because of how sick we are,” said Jerold Mande, who served as deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture from 2009 to 2011. “A big part of it is people shouldn’t be this sick this young in their lives. You’re lucky if you get to 18 without a chronic disease. It’s remarkable.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Strawberries vs Raspberries – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing strawberries to raspberries, we picked the raspberries.
Why?
They’re both very respectable fruits, of course! But it’s not even close, and there is a clear winner here…
In terms of macros, the biggest difference is that raspberries have moderately more carbs, and more than 3x the fiber. Technically they also have 2x the protein, but that’s a case of “two times almost nothing is still almost nothing”. All in all, and especially for the “more than 3x the fiber” (6.5g/100g to strawberries’ 2g/100g), this one’s an easy win for raspberries.
When it comes to vitamins, strawberries have more vitamin C, while raspberries have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, E, K, and choline. Another clear and easy win for raspberries.
In the category of minerals, guess what, raspberries win this hands-down, too: strawberries are higher in selenium, while raspberries have more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and zinc.
Adding up all the individual wins (all for raspberries), it’s not hard to say that raspberries win the day. Still, of course, enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
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As people live longer and healthier, nurse training needs to respond to avoid ageist attitudes
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Life expectancy in New Zealand has increased dramatically over the past five decades. In 1970, men lived on average to 68. Today, it’s over 80.
These gains reflect major advances in public health and medical technology. But living longer can mean more years with multiple chronic conditions and disabilities, because age is a significant risk factor for most disease.
This demographic shift will reshape healthcare. Future health professionals will need to be aware of the increasingly complex social, technological and ethical challenges of caring for older people.
Ageism, or discrimination based on a person’s age, should be considered as one of these challenges.
Age influences how health concerns are interpreted. In a recent World Health Organization report, nearly 60% of health professionals admitted to making age-based (or ageist) assumptions about their patients’ abilities or needs.
Genuine symptoms are dismissed as part of normal ageing, leading to flawed decisions. There is evidence that older people are also under-treated, raising the risk of disease progression.
Other consequences include missed diagnoses. Inequalities occur where there is limited access to services or inclusion criteria are set to exclude people over 65.
There is the potential for this kind of thinking to creep into health professional education. It shows up in stereotypes that appear in case studies for learning, or in the way programmes are structured and in the kinds of clinical placements that are used.
Getty Images Why ageism matters in healthcare
Our national nursing programme review in the polytechnic sector looked at New Zealand student nurses’ experiences.
It shows case studies often favoured information about older people with dementia, falls or end of life care. They rarely reflected active ageing or older adults’ resilience and agency.
Health professionals may adopt ageist attitudes from the rest of society. Student nurses begin their training programmes having been subject to both societal and cultural narratives about the role and importance of older people.
Nurse education programmes often communicated underlying beliefs about the complexity of care. Placements in aged residential care were typically scheduled in the first year of nursing, implying the work was basic if new students could do it.
Almost all nursing students were allocated to an aged-care facility where the frailest 7% of older people live. This reinforces a narrative that older adults are a homogeneous population of dependent, vulnerable people.
It misses the opportunity to teach health promotion for people who are older but remain active and independent.
What students saw
Students’ reflections highlighted the realities of aged residential care and the impact of their perceptions. One participant said:
While on placement, I saw how conveyor belt life was for the residents. It broke my heart. Residents had lost their individual identities and all fun was gone. The nurses and healthcare assistant staff were all so busy and didn’t have much time to interact on personal levels with each resident.
Others noted systemic issues:
People [nurses and carers] in aged residential care do not get paid what they are worth. This severely needs to be changed. They work so hard to not get appreciated as much as they deserve. [They are] constantly understaffed making the workload insurmountable and overwhelming.
Some worried about career stigma:
Being a new graduate and working in aged care would make me unemployable in other areas of nursing.
These comments illustrate how education and system design shape the attitudes of the future nursing workforce towards ageing and aged care. They also highlight the crucial role clinical placements have in shaping future career choices.
Tackling ageism starts in education
The programme review and student comments demonstrate how ageism influences learning, from case studies portraying older people as less capable to placements that equate ageing with frailty and funding systems that appear to devalue older people.
Addressing these issues starts with obvious steps, such as more appropriate design of learning materials and using placements that reflect a spectrum of health needs in later life.
For students who have little experience of older people, fostering inter-generational connection and building empathy can be a powerful tool to reduce ageist stereotypes.
But there is one more area to which we should be alert: ageism is in fact an emerging social determinant of health in later life.
There is a high risk that ageism will compound existing health inequities as Māori, Pacific people and rainbow communities grow older
Preparing the future healthcare workforce means recognising the diverse realities of ageing in contemporary New Zealand. If we want healthcare to meet the needs of an ageing population, education must reflect this complexity.
Tackling ageism in healthcare professional education is a critical first step.
Samantha Heath, Senior Lecturer in Nursing , University of Waikato
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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