How do you know an issue is serious and deserves greater attention? Well, when Jon Stewart makes fun of it on the Daily Show, of course. This clip is hilarious, and it also goes a long way towards recognizing seniors as sexual beings, showing that some aging adults are already getting involved in promoting healthier behaviors--and exposing that some elders definitely need some educational advice (especially when it comes to the dreaded disease cunnilinguism), before they die from herpes.
This spring, the National Sexuality Resource Center is delving into an exciting new project, rounding out our commitment to healthy sexuality throughout the lifespan by examining the sexuality needs of aging adults. A fantastic team of MPH interns from SF State's Health Education department are right now developing a pilot needs assessment looking at how elders in assisted living programs are or are not supported in terms of sexual health.
Seniors are having sex: as Stacy Lindau’s groundbreaking 2007 study(published in the New England Journal of Medicine) revealed, most people ages 57 to 85 think of sexuality as an important part of life and the frequency of sexual activity, for those who are active, declines only slightly from the 50s to the early 70s (Lindau , 2007). According to the CDC, the proportion of older HIV-positive individuals in the US has climbed from 20% to 25% and numbers of cases have risen in all 5-year age bands from 45 years to 65 years and older--11% of 2006 incident cases are in older individuals. In spite of this, only 38% of men and 22% of women reported having discussed sex with a physician since the age of fifty (Lindau, 2007). Healthy sexuality greatly contribute to the intimacy needs, health and wellbeing of individuals and couples—a connection made as early as 2001 in Surgeon General David Satcher’s 2001 Call to Action for Sexual Health. When sexuality is ignored and untended it contributes to poorer health outcomes through increased incidence of STIs and HIV.
Almost one million seniors already live in assisted living programs, according to the National Center on Assisted Living. As more healthy, active—and sexual—seniors move into assisted living programs, caregivers and facilities will increasingly face issues of how to promote the rights of seniors as sexual beings, how to talk about sexual issues (with seniors, their families and other staff), and how to negotiate this new sexual territory as the providers and facilitators of healthcare. Careful research assessment is needed to identify barriers, and to develop interventions that effectively address these barriers and put seniors in assisted living facilities on the path to healthier sexuality.
One crucial part of our initiative is simply raising awareness--seniors know they are having sex, but no one else wants to think about it. We have to get funders, policymakers, caregivers and family members to start recognizing the importance of supporting seniors' sexual health needs.
Thanks to Jon Stewart and his team for putting this on the radar--and look for more serious data, research and interventions from the NSRC in the months to come.
