I Live in St. Louis, Essay Example

I live in St. Louis – the largest metropolitan area in Missouri, the Midwest region. It is an independent city. The United States Census Bureau says that the total area of the city amounts to 66.2 square miles, 61.0 square miles of which is land and the rest is water. The climate here is quite severe and many older people find it hard to bear. By definition, it is humid continental climate which means we have cold winters and hot humid summers with high level of moisture brought about by the tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico. With temperature rising up to 100°F, summer often gives an outburst of heart attacks here. The area is affected by serious storms and sometimes damaging tornadoes.

St. Louis is home to a number of major U.S. corporations, both privately-owned and state, such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Graybar, Scottrade, Edward Jones, Emerson, Energizer, Anheuser Busch-InBev, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Purina, Charter Communications, Monsanto, and Wachovia Securities. The products originating in St. Louis include Budweiser beer, chemical products and genetically modified crops, pharmaceutical goods, brass era automobiles, railway cars, air vehicles etc. An important factor in St. Louis’ economy is relatively low housing costs ($150,500 compared to the national average of $217,000). Under the circumstances, the latest decade has seen a surge in housing rehabilitation and new construction on clear sites. Other costs of living also tend to be slightly or significantly lower than the national average, but the wages are lower respectively.

The region has a developed medical infrastructure. The central part is BJC HealthCare which operates Barnes-Jewish Hospital, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and eleven other institutions. Barnes-Jewish Hospital works in close cooperation with Washington University School of Medicine, the fifth largest in the world and ranking in the top five centers of medical research nationally. Together they operate the new but promising Siteman Cancer Center. Another part of the Washington University School of Medicine is the Genome Sequencing Center, which played an important role in the Human Genome Project. Here is also the home to one of the three US largest pharmaceutical research centers operated by Pfizer. Other institutions involved in biotechnologies include Danforth Center, the Solae Company and Sigma-Aldreich. Saint Louis University Medical School, which awarded the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River, operates the Saint Louis University Hospital, cancer center and bioethics institute. Moreover, CMS, Inc. and Multidata Systems International – two companies that produce radiation therapy planning software – are also located in St. Louis.

St. Louis is a comparatively old city with a large number of landmarks to attract tourists. In 1904 it welcomed two major events – World’s Fair and Olympic Games, both the first to ever take place in the United States. Now there are 105 parks in the city offering opportunities to meet and take walks, arrange and enjoy open-air concerts, picnics and baseball and tennis games. The Missouri Botanical Garden (Shaw’s Garden) is one of the world’s leading botanical research sites. Forest Park Houses St. Louis Art Museum with its extensive collection of masterpieces dating back to several centuries including paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Picasso and many others. Overall, St. Louis is famous for its outstanding museums, original architectural image and the range of performing arts.

Demographically, St. Louis is representative of the trends typical to the majority of US cities. An increasing demand for new housing after the Second World War meant for St. Louis dwellers a growing necessity to leave the downtown area for the suburbs. The process was assisted by the white flight with whites moving to the outskirts in great numbers. St. Louis population experienced a long-term decline which has only begun to reverse in recent years. In 2000, there was an estimated number of 348,189 people, 147,076 households, and 76,920 families in the city with 5,622.9 people per square mile.

Out of 147,076 households 25.4% have children younger than 18 living with them, 26,2% married couples, 21,3% presented a single female householder and 47.7% are non-families. 40.3% of all households are made up of individuals and 12.9% present a person over 65 living alone. 25.7% of the population are under 18; 10.6% are between 18 and 24; 30.9% are between 25 and 44; 19.1% are between 45 and 64; 13.7% are 65 and older. Thus, the median age is 34 years.

The official website of the City of St. Louis lists city departments including Aging Services and gives a brief description of St. Louis Area Agency on Aging located on North Grand Boulevard, 634. According to the information on the website, the Agency provides a system of community-based services for older adults in the City of St. Louis. The Agency aims at ensuring multilateral independence of older people – economic, social and personal. It provides opportunities for employment, socialization, and volunteer activities in the community. The Agency offers both in-home and community services. The former include delivering one third of the daily recommended nutrition for people who cannot shop on their own, offering personal non-medical care and doing chores or providing overall care while a primary caregiver is away. Community services are provided in 23 senior centers and 12 nutrition sites in public housing. Transportation services alleviate the problem of getting to the destinations for older people. Health promotion service is to inform older adults about the ways to maintain good health and realize disease prevention campaigns. A specially designed Senior Community Employment Program offers employment training for seniors aged 55 and over. The Agency also offers legal consultation to help protect the rights and interests of older people and to provide advise to older people and their families with financial and business concerns, such as Power of Attorney, Advance Health Care Directives, Guardianship, and Wills. The Agency supports Long Term Care Ombudsman Program which is designed to introduce positive changes in nursing homes by placing and supervising highly qualified volunteers in area nursing homes to address problems of nursing home residents and their families and friends in confidence. Unfortunately, the online resources for St. Louis Area Agency on Aging that I could find do not give any information on pricing and detailed information on eligibility. Further details are to be obtained via phone.

St. Louis Area Agency on Aging works in close cooperation with Mid-East Area Agency on Aging (formerly Gateway Elder Services), which has a more sophisticated website. Caregiver assistance services include respite care which allows primary caregivers to take some time off; providing durable medical equipment (apparently, the service relies on shoestring budget), occupational therapy assessment (if viewed as appropriate by the case manager), transportation, holding annual caregiver conferences, and homemaker and personal care services. Mid-East Agency supports Day Care Programs offering older people an opportunity to socialize in special centers (Chai House on Millstone Campus, Sarah Care Centre, St. Elizabeth Adult Day Care Centers) and allowing primary caregivers a break. The Agency also provides employment training programs and legal consultation. This Agency also makes use of phone communication in the first place. No opportunities to apply for a service online have been discovered. Mid-East Area Agency on Aging is a not-for-profit organization and relies on the funding provided under the amended Older Americans Act of 1965 and administered by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Many Agency workers are volunteers. It means that the necessary care is provided irrespective of the financial status of clients. However, the responses we obtained from people who receive and give care in the process of interviewing indicate that the Agency lacks financing.

A new step in care for older people was made by St. Louis’s Naturally Occurring Retirement Community which originated on a geographical area without special facilities of seniors but just having a large number of senior dwellers (more than 50% of the population in the area is 60 and over; they are the ones who qualify for the Community). The Communities organized in this way can be located both in city blocks and in large rural areas near St. Louis. The Communities were organized by a team of occupational therapists, social workers, psychologists, anthropologists, and medical practitioners. The project was supported by the U.S. Administration on Aging and the Jewish Federation of St. Louis. The needs assessment was done on the basis of the Washington University Center for Aging. The Community than started equipping chosen areas with sidewalks, places for older adults to socialize and supportive services. It also provided special transportation facilities. While the main aim of the project is to give older residents more opportunities to socialize and meet each other, other services are provided as well. For instance, older people are offered wellness courses specially designed to advise people on productive aging. Get-togethers are held regularly and give an opportunity to discuss advocacy to address community needs, share experience on hand-on activities like knitting and working with computers favored by older people, cover health and education topics etc. A characteristic feature of the Community is the fact that it is mainly managed by older adults themselves. This allows the most active of them to realize their management talents and makes the process of investigating the needs of older people much easier.

I first learned about the Community from a 71-year-old man I interviewed. He said the Community gave him an invaluable opportunity to communicate with his counterparts. Before he got involved, he did not realize how many people of his age there were in his residential area. Unexpectedly for him, he made good friends with some of them and enjoys their time together. However, this person is not in the know about other services for older people because for the time being he can take good care after himself despite living alone. He also appeared to dread the idea of applying to the Agency on Aging and being dependent on other people for his primary needs.

Two women in their early seventies I interviewed afterwards showed less reluctance to apply for the services of the Agencies in future. They felt they deserved some help about the house and transportation services after a lifetime of active social involvement and contribution to the community. Transportation was one of the main issues of complaint for the women. They could not drive any longer and hated the idea of public transport which left them long distances to walk. But they could not name anyone who they could complain about the situation to. One of the women was afraid to find herself left without support from her relatives for personal reasons. However, she felt at ease about receiving volunteer care. Both women mentioned they would choose to die at home rather than go to hospice in case of necessity.

I also interviewed two care providers and an administrator in one of St. Louis Area Agency on Aging senior centers. First of all, they said that the nature of the Agency relying heavily on donations and volunteer work should be changed given the current economic situation in the country. Older people would have more security if they knew that aging services were funded by the government. They also mentioned low level of trust to aging services on the part of older people, which leads to their denying themselves access to several easily available services. Consequently, they stressed the need for extensive promotion campaigns and said they needed more cooperation with physicians who provide general care for the residents. Different medical and social institutions hold regular surveys of the facilities for older adults and the people interviewed feel they are coping with the task.

In conclusion, the U.S. care for older people in my region meets the primary needs of senior citizens and their caregivers. Due to the establishment of St. Louis’s Naturally Occurring Retirement Community older people have more opportunities to socialize and feel less isolated as they age. The drawbacks of the system include imperfect and insufficient funding system. Moreover, many older people show reluctance to use the facilities offered to them because they do not feel secure with them and are not properly informed about what they have at their disposal.

References

Mid-East Area Agency on Aging. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://www.mid-eastaaa.org/

Opp, A. (2007). Productively Aging: St. Louis’s Naturally Occurring Retirement Community. Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://www.aota.org/News/Centennial/40313/Aging/40617.aspx

St. Louis Area Agency on Aging. Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://stlouis.missouri.org/government/hslaaa.html

St. Louis. Economic Overview. Retrieved March 31, 2009, from http://www.stlrcga.org/x414.xml

The United States Census Bureau. St. Louis. General Demographic Characteristics. Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U_DP1&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF1_U&-_lang=en&-geo_id=16000US2965000