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The Elder Beat Newsletter — August 2026
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Hello neighbors — and welcome to the August edition of The Elder Beat Newsletter.
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August has always felt to me like the last full breath of summer — the days still long, the light still generous, but with something in the air that hints at the turning ahead. I find myself both wanting to hold onto it and feeling ready, in some quiet way, for the change.
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I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the conversations we don't have — the ones we know we need to have with people we love about aging, about health, about what we want for ourselves and what we want for each other. We are publishing a post on exactly that topic later this month, and I'll confess I found it harder to write than most. Not because the information is complicated, but because the subject is close.
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I am also thinking about something a reader shared with us last month — a comment on Nextdoor that improved a blog post and reminded me, again, that the people reading The Elder Beat often know things I don't. That exchange is in this month's Community Corner, and it is exactly the kind of thing that makes building this publication feel worthwhile.
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Thank you for being here. August is a good time to check in on a neighbor, make a call you've been putting off, or simply sit outside long enough to notice that the evenings are still beautiful.
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With warmth from Happy Valley and Clackamas —
Molly Skeen
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Recent Posts on the Blog
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In-Home Care Services: What They Are, What They Cost, and How to Get Started
For many older adults and families, in-home care is something you think about vaguely until the day you need to think about it urgently. Our July 10th post is designed to change that.
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We cover the two main categories of in-home care — non-medical personal care and skilled home health care — and explain clearly what each one does and does not include. We walk through realistic costs and the payment options available to Clackamas County residents, including private pay, long-term care insurance, Medicaid, and Oregon Project Independence Medicaid, a program that provides sliding-scale in-home support to older adults 60 and over who meet income eligibility requirements. We cover the Carina registry for Medicaid recipients, what to know about hiring an individual caregiver independently versus through an agency, and what to do if you don't have family members to help navigate the process.
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If this is a topic you have been putting off thinking about, this post is the place to start.
→ Read the full guide at theelderbeat.org
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Prescription Drug Costs
Medication costs are one of the most significant and least-discussed financial pressures facing older adults on fixed incomes. Our July 20th post covers the programs and strategies most likely to help — and it was made better by a reader. You will find the full story in this month's Community Corner.
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We cover Medicare Part D plan comparison and why reviewing your plan each fall using the Medicare Plan Finder can produce meaningful savings. We explain Medicare Extra Help, worth an estimated $5,700 per year to qualifying beneficiaries, and the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program, which can eliminate Medicare premiums, deductibles, and copays for lower-income enrollees. We introduce Oregon's free ArrayRx discount card — available to every Oregon resident with no income or age requirements — and walk through manufacturer patient assistance programs, generic alternatives, and the NCOA BenefitsCheckUp tool.
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We also say something plainly that doesn't get said often enough: if prescription costs are affecting whether you take your medications as prescribed, tell your doctor. There are options — but only if the problem is named.
→ Read the full guide at theelderbeat.org
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Local Resource Spotlight
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ReFIT: Remodeling for Independence Together
For many older adults, the difference between staying in your home and having to leave it comes down to a single step, a narrow doorway, or an unsafe bathroom. These are not small things — they are the physical barriers that quietly determine whether aging in place is possible or not. ReFIT exists to remove them.
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ReFIT — Remodeling for Independence Together — is an Oregon nonprofit organization providing no-cost home accessibility modifications for neighbors facing both physical and financial barriers in the greater Portland area. Since 1997, the 100% volunteer-run organization has made it possible for neighbors to navigate their homes safely and live independently with dignity.
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ReFIT installs wheelchair ramps, grab bars, accessible bathrooms, widened doorways, and other critical modifications that restore safety, dignity, and independence. The work is done by volunteers, including licensed contractors who donate their time and skills; the cost to qualifying clients is nothing.
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ReFIT serves the tri-county area of Portland, Oregon making it directly relevant to older adults in Happy Valley and Clackamas who need home modifications but lack the financial resources to pay for them. This is the kind of program that changes the equation entirely for people who thought their options were running out. If you or someone you know might benefit from ReFIT's services, or if you are a contractor or volunteer looking for a meaningful way to give back, visit refitportland.org or call 503-698-8382.
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Info Tip of the Month: Advance Directives: Have You Put Your Wishes in Writing?
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Here is a question worth considering: if you were unable to speak for yourself tomorrow, would the people who love you know what you would want?
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An Advance Directive is a legal document that answers that question. In Oregon, the Advance Directive names a healthcare representative and describes your wishes for end-of-life care. It gives your family and your medical team clear guidance at exactly the moment when clear guidance matters most.
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The conversations that lead to completing this document are often harder than the paperwork itself. But having them — and having the document signed and in the right hands — is one of the most generous things you can do for the people who care about you.
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Oregon's Advance Directive form is free. It doesn't require an attorney, but it does need to be witnessed or notarized to take effect. You can download it in a variety of languages at the Oregon Health Authority website.
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If this is something you have been meaning to do and haven't, August is as good a time as any.
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Health Tip of the Month: Are You Taking Your Medications Safely?
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Older adults take more medications than any other age group, and the interactions between them — and between medications and the body's changing chemistry — are more complex than most of us realize.
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A few things worth reviewing with your doctor or pharmacist at your next visit:
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- The complete list of everything you take — including over-the-counter medications, vitamins, and supplements. Some people maintain separate lists for their primary care doctor and their specialists, so that no one has the full picture. Your pharmacist can run an interaction check on everything at once, which is worth doing annually.
- Whether any of your medications are on the American Geriatrics Society's Beers Criteria list — a regularly updated guide to medications that are potentially inappropriate for older adults due to increased risk of side effects including falls, confusion, and excessive sedation. Some commonly prescribed and over-the-counter medications appear on this list, and safer alternatives often exist.
- Whether any medications you have been taking for years are still necessary. Prescriptions are started for specific reasons, and those reasons sometimes resolve — but the prescription continues. A medication review with your doctor, sometimes called de-prescribing, can simplify your regimen and reduce the risk of interactions.
Your pharmacist is an underused resource for all of these questions. Most pharmacies offer medication review appointments at no cost, and pharmacists are specifically trained to identify interaction risks and alternatives. It's worth asking.
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One important caution: never stop or reduce a medication on your own without speaking with your doctor first, even if you have concerns about it. The goal of a medication review is to have that conversation with a professional — not to make changes independently.
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Community Corner
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This is a space for reader questions, local news, and the knowledge our community shares with each other.
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When we published our July 20th post on prescription drug costs, we thought we had covered the landscape thoroughly. We had not.
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A neighbor who found the post on Nextdoor left a comment that stopped us in our tracks. She told us about the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program — QMB — a Medicare Savings Program she relies on herself that pays her Medicare premium, all copays, and most of her prescription costs. We had not included it. She was right to flag it, and we are grateful she did.
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We went back to the post and added a full section on QMB. For lower-income Medicare beneficiaries, QMB can eliminate nearly all Medicare out-of-pocket costs — premiums, deductibles, and copays — and automatically qualifies enrollees for Extra Help with prescription drug costs. Oregon has no asset test for Medicare Savings Programs, making the program more accessible here than in many other states. The income limit for QMB in 2026 is $1,350 per month for a single person and $1,824 for a married couple.
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If you are on Medicare and managing costs carefully, this is one of the most important programs to know about — and one of the most underused. You can apply through the Oregon Department of Human Services or get help from a SHIBA advisor at 1-800-722-4134.
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We want to say thank you, publicly and sincerely, to the neighbor who shared what she knew. This is exactly what we hoped The Elder Beat would be — a place where neighbors share what they know, and where that knowledge makes the information better for everyone.
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If you ever notice something we missed, got wrong, or could say better, please tell us. Write to us at info@theelderbeat.org. You might end up improving something that helps a neighbor.
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Question of the Month
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Every month we pose a single question to our community and invite you to respond. Selected answers appear in this newsletter. There are no right answers — only neighbors sharing what they know, what they have learned, and what they think. We love hearing from you.
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A Response to July's Question
Last month we asked: Is there something you have started doing in the last few years that you wish you had started sooner?
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We received a response that we have been thinking about ever since. A reader wrote:
"Just recently started investigating long term care options and all the associated issues for taking care of a person with dementia. Wish I had started way sooner. Like many, I have been in comfortable denial that this need would arise — I kept telling myself 'I got this.' It is better to be prepared than to stress when it feels like a crisis is looming!"
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We are grateful she shared this — and we suspect she is not alone. Comfortable denial is a remarkably human response to hard things, and the care planning conversation is one of the hardest. What strikes us most about her response is the phrase "I got this" — so familiar, so understandable, and so common among capable, independent people who are accustomed to handling things on their own. Until the moment they can't.
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The Elder Beat will be publishing a post on legal planning for older adults — advance directives, powers of attorney, and related topics — later this fall. In the meantime, if you are in the early stages of thinking through care planning for yourself or a family member, the Clackamas County ADRC at 503-650-5622 is a good first call. They know the local landscape and their guidance is free.
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Thank you to our reader for her honesty. It takes courage to say "I waited too long" in a way that might help someone else start sooner.
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August's Question
What is one thing about growing older that turned out to be better than you expected?
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We chose this question deliberately, because we think the answer surprises people — including the people answering it. There is a lot of fear and dread attached to aging in our culture, and not nearly enough honest accounting of what is genuinely good about it. We are curious what our neighbors have found.
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To submit your response, visit the Question of the Month page on The Elder Beat website or write to us at info@theelderbeat.org.
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Elder Beat Reads
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Joyspan: The Art and Science of Thriving in Life's Second Half
by Dr. Kerry Burnight, Ph.D.
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Many books about aging start with fear. They catalog the risks, the losses, the declines, and then offer strategies for managing them. Dr. Kerry Burnight's Joyspan starts somewhere else entirely — with the conviction that the second half of life can be genuinely, measurably better than the first, if you know how to approach it.
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Dr. Burnight is a gerontologist and professor who spent sixteen years at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine caring for older adults suffering neglect and abuse, and co-founded the nation's first Elder Abuse Forensic Center. That background might suggest a grim book. Joyspan is the opposite. It is among the most optimistic serious books about aging published in recent years — and the optimism is earned, not assumed.
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The book is built around a concept Dr. Burnight calls "joyspan" — grounded in the science of well-being, contentment, connection, meaning, growth, choice, and purpose. Her central argument is that the conventional focus on lifespan and healthspan leaves out the most important dimension: the quality of the experience itself. A robust body of research, she argues, shines light on why some people thrive in their later years and others don't — and that the same practices that increase your joyspan have also been shown to increase your lifespan and healthspan. The arrows, as she puts it, all point in the same direction.
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What distinguishes Joyspan from other books in this space is its warmth and its practicality. Filled with perspective-shifting strategies for many of the specific challenges of aging — caregiving, unexpected diagnoses, isolation, financial concerns, and loss — it moves readers from fear of aging to peaceful confidence. The book is also threaded throughout with the story of Dr. Burnight's mother Betty, who at 96 is living proof of the book's argument and who has become something of a social media presence in her own right. Betty is a delight.
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Readers describe it as fresh and inspiring from the first page to the last — an idea book as much as a how-to guide, focused on how to grow, how to connect, how to adapt, and how to give.
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Joyspan is a New York Times bestseller, published in 2025. It is the right book for anyone who wants to approach the years ahead not with resignation but with genuine intention — and who is open to being convinced that those years can be among the best of their life.
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Available through the Happy Valley Library and at various online and local bookstores. We would love to hear what you think of it.
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Coming This Month
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August brings two posts we have been looking forward to sharing — and both come directly from the questions and experiences readers have brought to The Elder Beat:
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- Navigating Family Conversations About Aging (August 10) — This one was harder to write than most, and probably more necessary. Whether you are an older adult hoping to make your wishes clear to your family, or an adult child trying to find a way into a conversation that keeps not happening, this post is for you. We cover how to start, what to say, what to avoid, and why the hardest conversations tend to be the most important ones. We also talk about what to do when the conversation goes badly — because sometimes it does, and that is not the end of the story.
- Fall Prevention: Practical Steps for Staying Safe at Home (August 20) — Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among older adults in the United States, and the majority happen at home, in familiar surroundings, during ordinary activities. The good news is that most falls are preventable, and the steps involved are specific, practical, and largely inexpensive. We cover home safety assessments, the modifications that make the biggest difference, exercises that improve balance and strength, and local resources in Clackamas County that can help — including programs that may cover the cost of modifications for qualifying residents.
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Earlene on the Lighter Side
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Meet Earlene. Because aging well includes laughing well — at life, at the absurdities of getting older, and occasionally at ourselves. We hope she brightens your day.
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The Grocery Store, Revisited
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Earlene used to get in and out of the grocery store in twelve minutes. She timed it once. She was proud of this.
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Now she runs into someone she knows in the cereal aisle and they stand there for forty-five minutes talking about their knees. Then she forgets the cereal. Then she goes back for the cereal and runs into someone else.
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She has stopped timing herself.
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Some things are better not measured.
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A Closing Note
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August is, among other things, a good time to ask yourself whether there is a conversation you have been meaning to have and keep putting off.
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Not the difficult ones — though those too. The simpler ones. The check-in call to someone you haven't spoken to in too long. The thank you that is overdue. The question you have been meaning to ask a neighbor. The things that take five minutes and that you will be glad you did.
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The Elder Beat is now three months into its life as a newsletter, and what we are most grateful for is exactly that — the neighbors who have reached out, the readers who have shared what they know, the people who have made this feel less like a publication and more like a community.
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Thank you for being part of it. Enjoy the last weeks of summer, and do not hesitate to reach out.
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With warmth from Happy Valley and Clackamas —
— Molly Skeen
Founder, The Elder Beat
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