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Aging LGBT seniors a ‘major public health issue’

By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS

LGBT people of all ages have experienced health inequalities, but researchers have begun to delve into the consequences of a lifetime of that inequity – and what happens to their health as they grow older.

“They’ve been relatively invisible, undercounted and underserved,” said Dr. Karen Fredriksen Goldsen. “We’re talking about a major public health issue.”

LGBT people face health disparities due to stigma, discrimination and violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study Healthy People 2020. But those problems spike as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people age, said Fredriksen Goldsen, a researcher behind the ongoing Aging with Pride: National Health, Aging, and Sexuality/Gender Study. It’s a federally funded project following 2,450 LGBT adults from age 50 to over 100.

“We’ve found a constellation of high-risk factors, including a history of victimization and not getting access to the services they need,” said Fredriksen Goldsen, professor and director of Healthy Generations Hartford Center of Excellence at the University of Washington.

“Not everyone is experiencing poor health – in fact, most are doing very well,” she said. “But we wanted to understand the poor health outcomes in this community.”

According to the report, about 2.7 million U.S. adults 50 and older identify as LGBT, including 1.1 million age 65 and older. Those numbers are expected to nearly double by 2060.

About 13 percent of LGBT older adults report being denied health care or given poor care because of their sexual or gender identities. Among transgender participants, that number jumped to 40 percent.

“So many people have been denied care or received inferior care that they’ve become more hesitant now to obtain care,” Fredriksen Golden said.

Older LGBT adults are more likely than heterosexuals to smoke, drink excessively and report depression, according to the study.

And disparities exist even among subgroups within the LGBT community, with some struggling with their health more than others:

– Both Hispanic and African-American LGBT older adults in the project are more likely to report having HIV than their white counterparts.

– Hispanic LGBT adults are more likely to report asthma, diabetes and visual impairment.

– African-American LGBT older adults are more likely to be obese and have high blood pressure.

– Native American LGBT older adults are less likely to report cancer than whites but more likely to report poor physical health, disability, obesity, asthma and cardiovascular disease.

– Asian/Pacific Islander LGBT older adults are more likely to have visual impairment, but less likely to be obese or have cancer.

Compounding the problem is a lack of access to high-quality health and senior services. According to a recent AARP survey, about 48 percent of big city residents and 10 percent of rural and small-town residents say they have access to LGBT senior services in their community.

“People in rural areas are more dependent on the luck of the draw,” said Lisa Krinsky, director of the LGBT Aging Project at Fenway Health, a Boston-based health care, research and advocacy center.

Some LGBT residents in smaller New England towns regularly band together and make road trips to Boston for medical appointments.

“That’s a creative, resilient solution, but I’m concerned about what happens when people age and can no longer do the car ride. What happens when they become less mobile and lose their social connections?” Krinsky said, citing a study that reported social isolation can be as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. She said Fenway Health recently launched a pilot program to use video-conferencing to reduce social isolation among older LGBT adults.

Another ongoing health issue for older LGBT adults is HIV. Thanks to the success of antiretroviral drugs, people with the disease are living longer, and those 50 and older make up 45 percent of all Americans living with diagnosed HIV, according to the CDC.

“That’s a data point that doesn’t get much attention,” Krinsky said. “We think of it still as a young person’s disease.”

Yet as HIV patients age, health disparities continue. A recent study reported that those with HIV have about a 50 percent to 100 percent higher risk of heart attack or stroke compared with people who are negative for HIV, partly because doctors were less likely to prescribe them cholesterol-lowering drugs or aspirin.

Statistics like that underscore the unique health roadblocks facing older LGBT adults – including Baby Boomers, a group that’s been more open about their identity than older generations, Krinsky said.

“Boomers don’t want to have to go back into the closet to receive health care,” she said. “But if they perceive themselves as being in an unsafe place, they may have to go back.”

Fredriksen Goldsen said the Aging with Pride study has been expanded to explore dementia and other issues. The ongoing study has a high retention rate – 96 percent of the original participants are still in the study five years later – which gives her hope for the future.

“People are very interested in learning how to improve health in the community,” she said. “They really want to reduce disparities and create better health opportunities for the next generation.”

If you have questions or comments about this story, please email editor@heart.org.

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Titleist Launches TS Fairway Woods at Quicken Loans National

Picking up where it left off at the U.S. Open, Titleist is trickling out more of its upcoming TS metalwoods lineup. This time around it's the TS2 and TS3 fairway woods, and as was the case with the drivers, the company isn't providing much in the way of actual information just yet.

Here's what it is saying:

Building on the fast start for the new TS Drivers, our team continues the Tour seeding and validation process with the new TS2 and TS3 Fairway Metals at the Quicken Loans National. Performance validation for the new TS Drivers and Fairway Metals will ramp up over the coming weeks across the worldwide professional tours, so be sure to stay up to speed with our updates.

If you would like to stay up to speed, the Titleist website has a form for that. Feel free...

What is notable in the provided photos is that Active Recoil Channel, a signature bit of Titleist technology that disappeared from the TS Drivers, remains in the fairway wood. It's also worth mentioning that the TS3 fairway appears to leverage a form of SureFit CG adjustability. Both models feature adjustable hosels. There's no evidence, but we're going to assume that, like previous Titleist fairway releases, one of the models will be deeper faced and more suitable for use off the tee than the other.

Of Titleist and TaylorMade

We're early in the tease and release cycle here, so I'm willing to wait this out, but the Titleist approach to TS appears to mirror the TaylorMade strategy, and I'm not convinced that's entirely a good thing.

Firstly, the TS approach appears to be similar to the M approach. TS2, like the M4, is hosel-only adjustable, while the TS3 (M3) brings the kitchen sink of Titleist technology  - and yes, we know Mizuno does this as well. This part of the strategy I like because it brings an obvious point of distinction for those who won't be bothered to go through the fitting process to determine whether or not the movable parts offer any quantifiable benefit.

The part that could prove problematic is that, thus far anyway, the strategy is entirely tour-driven. Again - it's early, so there's still plenty of time for Titleist to start a conversation with the golfers it hopes will buy TS, but talking about the tour and yourselves to the exclusion of everything else is a recipe for stagnation, if not failure.

Recent history has taught us that when brands fail to relate to not just their core consumer, but to a larger piece of the marketplace, they struggle. That should be obvious enough, but what some golf brands - and to date, I'd include Titleist in that list - have thus far refused to accept is that the pyramid of influence has shifted, perhaps even imploded. It's much more peer-driven than it used to be; the influence of tour and the club pro is waining. It's great that your product works for the guys you pay to play it, but what does that matter for the rest of us?

Golfers are beginning to embrace to the idea that fitting matters more than tour counts and that paid influence rightfully doesn't count for much at all.

Rather than dig into the details of slipping or stagnant market share or buckets of red ink, I'll simply point out that while there is a correlation between tour use and retail success in the ball, putter, and wedge categories, that's basically where it ends - and even in these categories, gaps are narrowing.

The #1 Driver on tour is not #1 at retail, and that's the example that allows me to say the same is true in the fairway, hybrid, and iron categories - and it's worth noting that drivers and irons are where the real money is made.

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A Fresh Approach?

I'll stop short of saying I'm excited about the launch of the TS line, but I'm certainly curious. Titleist needs to do things differently this time around - and I'm fairly certain it knows it. Whether or not it can execute this launch in a manner that excites consumers beyond the confines of #TeamTitleist is the challenge. That's particularly difficult when your brand's heritage is rooted in the professional game.

I will say there are signs of fresh thinking coming from Titleist and I certainly like what I've heard over the last several months. Will that manifest in a new strategy that reaches more golfers without compromising the Titleist identity?

We'll find out in a couple of months.

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Callaway XJ

While the demographics are shifting slowly, the golf equipment marketplace is still dominated by the adult male, and while that guarantees that information about $500 drivers and $1200 iron sets is readily available, when new women’s club or a compelling new offering for juniors hits the market, you don’t often hear about it because we don’t hear about it.

In close to 8 years at MyGolfSpy, I can count the number of press releases I’ve received about golf clubs for juniors on one hand – and if memory serves, they all came from Cobra. Incidentally, the count is roughly the same for women’s clubs – and again, most of those came from Cobra.

Given all the emphasis on growing the game, it would be a bit surprising if not for the fact that mainstream golf companies habitually play to the middle of the market, which is pretty much the definition of mainstream.

The golf brands you know don’t spend big, or in many cases at all, to raise awareness for anything other than their mainline offerings, but as the industry continues to contract and becomes more reliant on participation from outside golf’s traditional demographics, hopefully, that’s going to change.

While it’s mostly being done quietly, there does seem to be an effort underway by some brands to better integrate women’s and junior products into the mainlines. Case in point, the new Xj line of junior clubs from Callaway Golf.

Truth be told, I only found out about Callaway’s new offerings because my 7-year-old daughter needed new clubs and Callaway’s Jason Finley responded to a tweet I posted looking for recommendations.

Spoiler alert – Jason suggested the Callaway Xj.

While Callaway isn’t throwing much of the weight of its marketing machine behind its new junior line, the company has made some significant changes to its approach to the junior space. The result is a new line of junior clubs that make more sense for the consumer and better aligns with the Callaway identity.

Height-Based Sizing

Sizing by height rather than age isn’t revolutionary stuff. US Kids recommends sets based on height. PING does it too. Lots of brands do it. Callaway will admit it lagged behind in this regard, instead sizing by age. With Xj, not only is Callaway leveraging a height-based sizing system, it has expanded the lineup to include three sets that cover kids from 38” to 61” inches. There’s also a new teen set (the Xt) designed to serve as a bridge between junior and adult clubs.

• Xj1 (38”-46”) is a 4-piece set that includes a fairway wood, 7-iron, sand wedge, and putter ($199.99).
• Xj2 (47”-53”) is a 6-piece set builds on the Xj1 with the inclusion of a driver and a 9-iron ($299.99).
• Xj3 (54”-61”) is a 7-piece set that adds a hybrid ($399.99).
• Xt is a 10-piece set that contains a driver, fairway, hybrid, 6-iron through PW, sand wedge and putter ($549).

As you can see, the number of clubs increases with age, and that plays to the reality that a typical 5-year-old, probably doesn’t need a full bag of clubs, and a typical 8-year-old, probably doesn’t either.

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Neutral Colors

In the past, Callaway has gone more or less all-in on what would often be described as boy colors and girl colors. With Xj the took a more neutral approach. "We know that there are a lot of girls that don’t love pink," said Callaway’s Jason Finley. With Xj, both white and blue bags are offered, and while white is considered the more feminine option, neither comes close to being gender-specific. My daughter went with the blue, and she loves it.

The Full Callaway Treatment

Callaway concedes that in the past its treated its junior sets as an afterthought. Things are different this time around. The Xj had plenty of input from what Jason Finley called Callaway’s Varsity Team. The same industrial designers who work on Callaway flagship products like the Rogue driver worked on Xj. The guys who designed the Xj bag are the same guys who work on Callaway’s mainstream offerings, and while the clubs themselves may not feature Callaway signature technology like Jailbreak and 360 Face Cup, the designs leverage Callaway’s past work in the club space – with the necessary adaptations for the size and weight requirements of the junior golfer.

The most appreciable change is that drivers in the Xj and Xt line feature 100% titanium construction. In the past, Callaway has used titanium blends. Finley told me that Titanium provides a bit more ball speed (even for kids), but of equal importance for the target demographic, it’s more durable. I promise you; kids don’t baby their clubs like many of us do.

It’s all part of a larger strategy to create a premium junior product worthy of the Callaway name. Over the past six years or so, Callaway has worked to position itself as a premium brand, and that’s trickling down to its junior sets by way of better materials, better construction, and a level of attention that Callaway hasn’t previously paid to its junior sets.

Given the price point and the fact that kids outgrow things quickly, Callaway knows the Xj won’t be for everyone. That said, the expectation is that golfers who identify with #TeamCallaway will be more inclined to have their kids play what they play. "They [parents] want it to look like what they have,” said Jason Finley, “and they don’t want their kid to be the one with the cheap set.”

And not for anything, it’s not a stretch to think that most kids will want to play what mom or dad plays. The company hopes Xj will better enable golfers to get their kids into a Callaway product.

The younger, the better, right?

You can expect to find Xj at both green grass and big-box locations. The former is particularly interesting because, while it’s likely not going to be a top priority for Callaway’s reps to sell-in, it does offer shops – particularly those run by Callaway staffers – a viable option for juniors that doesn’t require them to bring in additional lines.

Callaway is exploring options for a trade-in/trade-up program which will effectively help the clubs grow with the kid. Given the +/- 2-year viability of junior clubs (they grow-up so fast), helping parents save money while keeping their kids in Callaway is a textbook win-win.

You Have Other Options

None of this should suggest that Callaway is your only option for kids sets. US Kids has a solid reputation, PING has excellent junior offerings, as does Cobra – especially so for kids just a bit older than mine. Nearly everyone who makes golf clubs for adults dabbles in the junior space with varying degrees of commitment.

The larger point is that manufacturers are starting to realize that today’s junior golfer is tomorrow’s loyal customer. As a result, companies are expanding their offerings, and to some degree, even driving innovation in a category that has too often been treated as an afterthought.

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How much is too much to spend on a set of junior golf clubs?

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Tending to heart health may keep dementia at bay

By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS

There’s no definitive evidence about what can prevent Alzheimer’s disease. But experts believe healthy behaviors that are good for your overall health can slow or delay some forms of dementia.

Heart and blood vessel health earlier in life is associated with Alzheimer’s and other dementia in later years. So, minimizing cardiovascular disease risk factors could help prevent damage to the brain that can lead to dementia, said Dr. Rebecca Gottesman, a professor of neurology and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University.

“It’s probably important to control these risk factors, and it’s probably important to control them at a younger age,” she said.

Those with heart disease risks during middle age are more likely to have dementia when they are older, according to a study led by Gottesman in 2017. The research followed the progress of more than 15,000 people in four U.S. communities beginning in 1987 when the participants were 45 to 64 years old.

Middle-aged study participants who had heart disease risks such as high blood pressure, smoking or diabetes when the study began were more at risk for developing dementia later. The research found an especially high dementia risk in people who had diabetes in middle age.

In a separate study published last year, Gottesman looked at the presence of amyloid, or protein pieces that form plaque in the brain and are believed to be a main cause of Alzheimer’s.

That study showed people with such heart risks as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and smoking in middle age were more likely to accumulate amyloid in the brain as they aged. The more of the risk factors present, the more likely amyloid was later detected.

The exact link between cardiovascular disease risk factors and dementia and Alzheimer’s isn’t clear, Gottesman said. But research suggests middle-age heart and vascular health may affect brain changes that cause deterioration.

Why is middle age so crucial?

It may be that middle age is a “critical window” for risk factors affecting dementia onset, Gottesman said. Or, it’s possible high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight and smoking play a big role even in earlier in life, but the cumulative effects aren’t seen until middle age.

“Some of this damage can take decades to occur,” she said.

For instance, the sooner a smoker quits, the better. Smokers are at higher risk for chronic conditions such atherosclerosis, which is the buildup of fatty substances in the arteries. That buildup can lead to heart disease and stroke.

An estimated 5.7 million Americans have Alzheimer’s today and that number is increasing, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Worldwide, it’s expected that 75 million people will have dementia by 2030 and that 131 million will by 2050.

“Often these diseases place burdens on families, financial and otherwise,” Gottesman said, adding that “no one is fully prepared.”

In 2018, the total direct cost for caring for people with Alzheimer’s will reach $277 billion in the United States. That number could rise to $1.1 trillion by 2050.

If you have questions or comments about this story, please email editor@heart.org.

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How to Make an Animated Explainer Video That Resonates With Your Audience

Animated explainer videos are engaging and can help you create strong connections with current and potential customers. In this article, we’ll cover what makes a great animated explainer video, and how to create one for your business.

Why animated videos?

Wait, aren’t all well-crafted explainer videos engaging? Well, yes, but with animation, you have some extra benefits that you may not have thought about:

They are great for explaining complex products 

Compared with live action videos, animation can help you show your product in detail. Adding graphics to highlight important data that may help transform seemingly boring and complicated numbers into something your audience can easily digest and remember.

They are fully customizable

Thought the power of animation, you can actually create your own world. Let’s say you have a musical product and you would like your character to be dancing in a disco or a live theater—or both! That would be very expensive and time-consuming for a live action video. You might even need to hire thousands of actors to have a crowd. With animation, you can create your own scenario and your characters as you wish.

Don’t just trust what I say, trust Dropbox. The file hosting service saw a 10 percent conversion increase from their animated explainer video—meaning,10 million new users!

The most popular explainer video styles are:

• Screencast
• Cartoon style
• Whiteboard
• Motion graphics

This article will be all about cartoon-style explainer videos, because it’s a very engaging style, and budget-wise is an ideal choice for startups and entrepreneurs.

So, let’s dive in!

1. First things first: Know your audience

Before starting, it’s essential to have a clear perspective about your target market. If you still don’t, you should use some analytics tools like Google Analytics to help you understand more about your ideal customers’ demographics.

For example: Who is coming to your website? Are they male or female? How old are they?

It’s helpful to know your target audience because they should be represented by your video’s main character. Once you have gathered that data, try to picture yourself how they would look as a character. Is the person a woman? What is she wearing? What is her job? This is called a customer or buyer persona.

Our animated video production company, Yum Yum Videos, created this story in which we leveraged all that information about a client’s target audience to build the main character.

2. Write your script

Now that you have your character, you need to write a powerful but very short story in which your character will experience a problem—your audience’s pain point—and your product will help him or her to solve that problem.

This kind of animated marketing video script has three moments:

The what: You need to show your target audience what problem your product solves. This way, you will quickly grab their interest and keep their attention until the end.

The how: Now that they know what problem you solve, you will need to show how your product can help them. In general, it is at this moment when your logo will be shown.

The why: It’s time to sell! Tell your target audience why your product is the best choice in the market to solve their problem.

Keep in mind that 160 scripted words in English are equal to around one minute of video. So, for a 90-second video, you will need 240 words.

This is the video that helped Dropbox increased its conversion and make $50 million in additional revenue. You’ll see the three moments of the marketing plot crystal clear: in the first thirty seconds, they explain their audience’s pain point; after their logo, the solution is presented; then, they explain more about their product’s unique features. Check it out!

3. Let’s get artsy! Draw your storyboard and make style frames

This pre-production step shows in still images what the video will be like frame by frame. Similar to a cartoon, the storyboard allows us to see what the camera will show in each shot before we get into the production of the video.

If you are making your video on your own, here’s one software platform option you have to draw a storyboard.

This is a fine storyboard sample from one of our animated videos (VO stands for voice-over):

4. Create your style frames

Once you’ve cemented your basic storyboard, if you’re working with a professional company, they’ll put together style frames.

Style frames are high-resolution frames (based on the storyboard) that represent part of the video—something like taking pictures of your finished video. These colored still images help to visualize the true quality of the final video way before it’s done.

See a clear example below:

5. Consider design options

Here is where you have two options: you can use a template-based product, or hire a professional company.

If you have some budget and time restrictions, you can try some of the several software platforms to create an animated video. You’ll see they have pre-designed characters and backgrounds that are used over and over for several companies.

If you hire an animated production company, you only need to provide them with your insight about your target audience, your product’s benefits, and your video’s main goal. They will take care of the rest of the steps to create an impactful video.

Once all of the previous stages are checked by the client, professional illustrators will digitally draw all the graphic elements that will be used in the video. These include characters, typographies, and backgrounds. Every detail will be fully customized to represent your unique brand’s personality.

For example, CrazyEgg—the service created by Hiten Shah and Neil Patel—increased conversions by 64 percent and made $21,000 of extra monthly revenue when they placed this animated marketing video on their landing page.

Pay attention to their main character: it’s an egg with a funny mustache! You can only get that level of customization with a professional company, not with a template. Simply put, without that funny character, this whole video just wouldn’t be funny at all.

6. Source your animation

Using all the graphic elements, storyboard frames, and voice-over recordings, professional animators manage to set the entire video in motion. From character’s movements in the scene to facial expressions, professional digital artists will make your video look funny when it has to be funny.

On that note, have you checked out how important are these CrazyEgg’s facial expressions and his mustache’s movements to convey this brand’s message?

7. Record your voice-over

Usually, in an animated explainer video, characters don’t speak. Instead, there’s a  voice-over—like a narrator— that needs to be recorded separately.

Choosing the right voice is the key to truly representing your audience. It needs to match their profile and set your video’s tone and mood. That’s why it’s very important to consider hiring a professional voice-actor that’s also a native speaker (from the country of the target audience) in order to enhance your script.

Of course, there are some free automated voice generators available on the web, but they sound robotic and strange when you need your voice-over to be funny and witty. Believe me, making that mistake could ruin your video instead of building that priceless bond with your audience!

8. Add sound FX

Let’s assume your animated story has a skyrocket in it like in the storyboard above. Well, you’ll probably need the sound of a skyrocket taking off. All those sounds are what we call FX and you will need them to enhance your story.

Bear in mind that you’ll also need music to help set the tone of your explainer video. The rule of thumb is that music without lyrics is better to avoid the risk of overlapping the voice-over.

The music editing and sound FX mixing, along with the final audio adjustments, makes up the final stage of the video production process.

Get to it!

Remember, no matter if you are going to make your video yourself or hire a professional company, you need to know who your target audience is and what its pain points are.

Make sure you follow every step of this guide when crafting an animated video: write a script, make a storyboard, design your characters, use a professional voice-over, and add music. Don’t forget to use your brand graphics and colors to build a strong identity.

If you need more inspiration, grab some popcorn and check out our best animated explainer videos.

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Regular tea drinking might help your heart as you age, study suggests

By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS

The latest study on the coffee alternative suggests at least a cup a day may help your body cling to heart-helping “good cholesterol” as you age.

Previous research has suggested more tea may significantly lower the risk of heart disease and stroke by reducing low-density lipoprotein, or LDL, the “bad” cholesterol that can build up in arteries.

What’s uncertain is tea’s effect on high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, the healthy cholesterol that helps eliminate LDL. Some studies found that tea significantly increased HDL, while others found no consequence at all.

But tea appears to slow the natural decrease in HDL that occurs during aging, according to the new study published Monday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The study monitored more than 80,000 people from the Kailuan community of Tangshan, China, over a six-year period. It found regular tea drinkers had a slower age-related decrease in HDL levels. That decline was linked to an eventual 8 percent decrease in cardiovascular risk among those in the study.

Green tea had a slightly stronger effect than black tea, but both are full of polyphenols and catechins, two antioxidant compounds recognized for their anti-inflammatory properties. The researchers did not collect data on coffee, which is not popular in that area of China.

The link between greater tea consumption and slower HDL decreases appeared the most pronounced in men and in people age 60 and older who typically had higher heart disease risk factors such as tobacco use, larger body mass index and low physical activity levels.

“We still observed a significant association in these people, which suggests that the observed association cannot be totally interpreted by someone’s overall healthy lifestyle,” said Dr. Xiang Gao, the senior author of the study’s report and the director of the Nutritional Epidemiology Lab at Pennsylvania State University.

There were several limitations to the study, though.

For example, findings were based on self-reported information about weekly or monthly tea consumption and did not reflect whether people drank more than one cup a day. The study also lacked key dietary information, including details about intake of fruits, vegetables, meat and whole grains.

In addition, the study examined people from a specific community in China that isn’t representative of the nation’s population at large.

“However, the results represent a large cohort of individuals living in China who have a wide range of tea intakes and a low intake of coffee,” the study’s authors noted.

Getting a similar sampling of tea drinkers elsewhere would be difficult, said Judith Wylie-Rosett, a professor and division head for health promotion and nutrition research in the department of epidemiology and population health department at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Wylie-Rosett, who wasn’t associated with the study, credited it for taking “a cautious approach to endorsing the benefits” of tea consumption, as well as examining the impact on HDL levels.

“We don’t tend to talk much about the decline in HDL cholesterol with age, and our main lifestyle strategies for trying to increase it are vigorous physical activity and losing weight,” she said.

Overall, Wylie-Rosett described the study as “one of those nice stories that people who drink tea feel good about, but it doesn’t really change a whole lot of anything other than help researchers think about the next study they need to do.”

Because of inconclusive results in tea studies, neither the American Heart Association nor the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans make recommendations about how much to consume.

If you have questions or comments about this story, please email editor@heart.org.

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