Improving Age Inclusivity

The Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging works to increase conversations around age inclusivity and diversity and improve the awareness and understanding of ageism. We do this by developing issue briefs and infographics addressing ageism and how to combat it.

Ageism Awareness Workshops & Presentations

WashU Foundations of an Inclusive Workplace: Fostering Age Inclusivity

We incorporate language and tactics from The National Center to Reframe Aging in our educational tools. Our course Foundations of an Inclusive Workplace: Fostering Age Inclusivity provides WashU staff and faculty with fundamental concepts for increasing awareness of age as a social identity.

This course is offered once a semester with the Office of Institutional Equity for WashU employees through Learn@Work.

Center leaders Natalie Galucia and Nancy Morrow-Howell are certified as Master Trainers by the Reframing Aging initiative.

Presentation on ageism for the Missouri Foundation for Health’s Health Equity Conference

Center co-directors were invited to present at the Health Equity Conference sponsored by the Missouri Foundation for Health. This program brought together service organizations and funders here in the region that focus on aging issues for a conversation about how to think about health equity across the lifespan.

As part of the center’s contribution to the conversation, we compiled interviews with younger people about their perspective on aging to emphasize the idea that healthy aging is an intergenerational and lifespan issue.

Watch Perspectives on Later Life →

Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging at WashU’s Day of Dialogue & Action

Our co-directors, Nancy Morrow-Howell, PhD, and Brian Carpenter, PhD, presented and led a dialogue on age inclusivity at WashU’s annual Day of Dialogue and Action (DoDA). At DoDA, members of the WashU community pause, convene, and engage in experiences ranging from research presentations, active dialogue, and more.

Ageism Awareness Resources

Understanding & Confronting Ageism

Background Paper | March 2022

The Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging developed this background paper to provide foundational information and resources to reduce ageism in institutions of higher education and in the communities that they are located.

Age Inclusive Language Guidelines

Presentation | February 2022

This resource from the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging provides best practices for age inclusive language.

Ageism: How it Affects us all

Infographic | January 2022 

This infographic was created by the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging to illustrate the types of ageism, its effects and what can be done to combat it.

Resources developed by the Reframing Aging Initiative

  • The video, Frame of Mind: The Why and How of Reframing Aging, is part of a series of three videos that helps us use language that presents a more accurate understanding of aging and describes how we can more positively view aging.
  • This communication guide uses the Reframing Aging Initiative’s evidence-informed research and guidance from the American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, and Associated Press style guides to demonstrate how to use age-inclusive language, without age-bias, in writing documents and other communications.
  • The Quick Start Guide, is a tip sheet that demonstrates framing, the process of making choices about how we use words to describe people and cues.
  • To help celebrate our diversity as we age, the National Center to Reframe Aging and SAGE’s National Resource Center on LGBTQ+ Aging developed Language Guidance When Serving LGBTQ+ Populations.
  • The National Center to Reframing Aging offers a resources on guides, toolkits, courses and more.
  • A communications toolkit developed by FrameWorks, Gaining Momentum, features tested strategies and evidence-informed tools that have been found to reduce implicit bias towards aging.

Blog posts on ageism

Articles written by or featuring the Center for Aging team