Featured Articles & Ideas

Why scientists need to be storytellers: the role of narrative in science making and dissemination.

The weekbefore the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released its recommendations against routine prostate screening for healthy men, celebrity patients including Joe Torre and Rudy Giulianihad already lined up to challenge the population-based recommendations. To promote their position that prostate screening antigen test is life saving, these individuals relied on a powerful tool: their own personal narratives.Unfortunately, the experts whose goal is to disseminate and...

From dependency to interdependency: Pat Summitt’s challenge to America.

Pat Summitt’s announcement that, at the age of 59, she has been diagnosed with dementia caused by Alzheimers disease is sad news. Her plan to continue working as the head coach of the eight-time NCAA Division I national championship University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team is a shot heard round an aging world.

A person diagnosed with dementia still working? The idea seems bizarre, and yet a big money college athletic program does not run...

Selected essays....

Below are selected essay with links to download several of them (many thanks to the University of Pennsylvania's Scholarly Commons that houses these dowloads).

1. The voting rights of older adults, particularly those with cognitive impairment:

Voting by Elderly Persons with Cognitive Impairment: Lessons from Other Democratic Nations...