When I first arrived in Florida in 2013, Florida State University hadn’t experienced a hurricane for decades, and the Florida Panhandle wasn’t hit by a major storm for many years. But Hurricane Hermine hit Tallahassee in 2016, and Hurricane Michael made landfall around Mexico Beach in 2018. Since then, we have learned the importance of muscle memory in successfully responding to these extreme events.

Theories of successful aging point to the crucial role of social connections in promoting health, quality of life, and wellbeing. However, in the United States about 20% of men and 33% of women age 65 and older live alone, putting them at risk for social isolation. Age-related changes in health, mobility, employment status, and social network size can also increase isolation risk.

The recent article by Amy Keller within the May edition of Florida Trend was both illuminating and scary at the same time. Amy deserves a quick shout out for her article, “Future Shock.” I found it to be an excellent 50,000-foot  overview of the current use of electric vehicles (EVs) in Florida.

You may recall my early blog entry when vaccines first became available to the public for COVID prevention:  https://isl.fsu.edu/article/youve-gotten-vaccine-can-life-now-return-normal.

By Neil Charness, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Successful Longevity

Transportation innovation has been evolving significantly for at least 10 years. But this evolution of electric, automated, and on-demand services is leaving persons with disabilities (PWDs) and many older adults on the curb.

The U.S.

I recently wrote about the need to plan ways to transfer your digital assets to heirs, particularly in light of the increased deployment of two-factor authentication

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics recently released estimates for Life Expectancy at Birth in the United States for 2020: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/VSRR015-508.pdf.  As might be expected during the COVID-19 pandemic, the figures are grim.  We have lost about 1.5 years of life expectancy, with subgroups such as Latinos and African Americans experiencing even worse declines: 3 years and 2.9 years, respec