DARING TO GROW OLD - LESSONS IN HEALTHY AGING AND EMPOWERMENT

The capacity to achieve and retain, control over one's own life-to mak e decisions about and exert power over one's situation-is strongly cor related with being healthy. For older persons, there is a real danger that professionals with good intentions will encroach on this control in, the name of providing service. We examine the issues of power, con trol, decision making, and healthy aging from the perspective of educa ting health care providers. Particular attention is paid to how health care providers see their role in, defining older adults as being at r isk when they refuse service or take risks that providers define as un acceptable. We raise this issue of appropriate professional control an d cite the literature on successful coping to argue for policies and p ractices that enhance personal autonomy and interdependence as effecti ve vehicles for healthy aging. Lessons from primary health care are ap plied to healthy aging even in, the face of diminished capacities.