From Personalized Medicine to Personalized Aging Services

As medical models become more ubiquitous in developing strategies to provide long-term care services and support (LTSS), we need to ask whether these models adequately account for sources of diversity and disadvantage that affect access to and use of services by older adults. Medical models typically focus on categorizing information about the individual in order to clearly define current health status and appropriate treatment. Any individual, however, reflects the sum of their life experiences. Therefore, this medicalization approach can miss key factors in determining health outcomes including social determinants of health. Just as importantly, this approach can miss issues of values, beliefs, and assumptions that older adults can bring into the encounter with service providers. This issue is especially important when dealing with older migrant communities. Beliefs and attitudes shaped in their place of origin, as well as the migration experience, can influence levels of trust and resulting decisions regarding the use of LTSS. We need to integrate an understanding of how these beliefs and attitudes affect decision making into any model designed to improve the lives of older persons.