When Jacklyn Kohon was working toward her doctorate degree, she faced a difficult choice. Kohon was fascinated by the field of gerontology, and she was equally interested in urban planning with a focus on sustainability.
“When I started my Ph.D. program, I got the advice to choose one area, but I really wanted to bridge these two seemingly disparate but very much connected fields,” she said. “I started to look at sustainability within an urban planning framework, and then think about how the health of older adults is considered within that. My whole dissertation is about integrating the social determinants of health into urban sustainability planning.”
Today, Kohon is a senior research associate at the Institute on Aging at Portland State University and a visiting researcher at the Research Center for Sustainability and Environment at Shiga University in Japan. Her work focuses on the intersections of community health, environmental change, and health inequities, particularly surrounding older adults.
“Taken separately, global climate change and population aging are two really big issues that are felt at the local level,” she said. “We really need to work on them from research, policy, and community action perspectives.
“When I first started, there wasn't much previous research to cite and many folks didn't seem to identify it as an important issue,” she said. “That has changed, especially since we have seen a lot of big climate events and the disproportionate impacts on older adults. People are understanding the connections more now that they can literally see it happening at the local level.
“The convergence creates a lot of challenges, especially in long-term care settings because these are some of the most vulnerable populations,” she said. “It’s important to try to support people and communities to build resilience and prevent unnecessary health impacts and deaths.”
Kohon offers a timely example: Research shows that older adults who live in social isolation are more likely to experience heat-related illness or death due to thermoregulatory impairments; in other words, they don’t physically cope as well with heat waves. One of her recent studies maps extreme heat vulnerability among older adults in Oregon to analyze their needs.
“At a certain point, our bodies don’t process temperature in the way that they used to,” she explained. “They are often not able to perceive temperature increases. If there is an extreme heat event, older adults may be overdressing. They may not have access to air conditioning, or they may not think or be able to afford to use it. The bottom line is, if you don’t have someone to check on you, it increases the risk.”
Kohon is also studying how people living and working in assisted living, residential care, and memory care are impacted by extreme weather events.
“We are specifically looking at workforce related issues,” she said. “The pay for direct care workers at these types of facilities tends to be fairly low, and many facilities have problems with staffing. An extreme weather event puts even more strain on already strained resources.”
That’s in part because staff members at senior living facilities often need to address personal and family issues related to the same extreme weather that is affecting the facility where they work, Kohon explained.
Working as a visiting researcher in Japan, which has the world's oldest population based on the percentage of people aged 65 and older, has given Kohon a broader perspective on this intersection.
“It gives us a window into our future in the U.S., as well as many other aging societies,” she said. “Japan's system is much better set up to support older adults for a variety of reasons, including a comprehensive healthcare system that covers everyone, a long-term care insurance system, and many informal community supports that keep older people engaged in social activities.”
Moving forward, Kohon hopes to continue to work on the challenges related to the health of older adults and climate change.
“I’m interested in workforce preparedness for extreme weather events and thinking about challenges related to the most vulnerable individuals, such as those with dementia,” she said. “I want to understand the barriers related to their health and safety, and also protective factors."