Combat Ageism and Elevate Aging

How often do you see or hear ageist language in your daily life? Ageism can be found in academia, the media, policy, health care—it can be projected on the big screen or pop up in casual conversation. Whatever the source, these tools can help you teach others about avoiding ageist language and promoting positive views of aging.

Elevate Aging Through Language: A Usage and Style Guide
Based on data from the Elevate Aging Project, this style guide identifies words and phrases that perpetuate ageist views and suggests replacements that promote positive views of aging.

Moving Beyond Aging Stereotypes – Members Only
Part of the Voice of Assisted Living series of presentations, this PowerPoint shows how to focus on a person’s capabilities, wisdom, and experience, rather than their age.

The Elevate Aging Project

In 2018, CALA partnered with Elder Care Alliance on the Elevate Aging Project as a way to begin the shift away from ageist beliefs and toward more aging-friendly thoughts and actions. The project took the form of an interactive display at Elevate: CALA’s Conference & Trade Show, where visitors were asked to respond to questions on growing older and age-related word choice.

The responses from this initial event and subsequent events of aging professionals resulted in a robust data set of words and phrases, both those that are considered by the field to be ageist and those that have a positive connotation. Click here to read more about the project and its results. To learn how to bring the Elevate Aging Project to your community, click here.