New community initiative focuses on seniors

A new community initiative is all about helping older adults stay strong, active and independent as they age.

"Living Strong North Idaho is really an integration of health, fitness, nutrition, community support and basically all things that are senior-centric," Living Strong North Idaho founder and Executive Director John Joseph said Monday.

At its core, Living Strong North Idaho, a program of the Inland Northwest Healthy Aging Alliance, is an integrated health system that enables "upstream" practitioners who focus on preventive care to integrate fitness and nutrition into patient care, Joseph explained.

"They get to see the big picture," he said. "We're not reinventing any wheels. We're just putting them on the same vehicle so they roll in the same direction.

"It's a health care model that runs parallel to the existing health care model that fixes broken bones and disease and all of that. This is all upstream preventive but taking consideration of all the aspects that go into that."

Joseph, 65, of Post Falls, has a vision for creating a resource that helps adults gracefully age into seniorhood. The youngest of six children, he shared how he recently saw a photo of an older brother and thought, "'He looks old,' which was shocking to me because I realized in my mind, 'I'm not that much younger than he is.'"

"Helping seniors cope with getting older and what that really means is also kind of important," Joseph said.

Living Strong North Idaho officially received 501(c) (3) nonprofit status in April. Following the launch, Joseph said a community space will be leased for programming, and ultimately, within a couple of years, a senior wellness facility will be established.

"We're trying to create an environment where seniors can build good healthy habits and just have an environment where they're comfortable doing so," he said.

The center will have shared space for practitioners such as physical therapists.

"They can see their own patients there, you can become a patient there, they can cross-refer," he said.

Like community facilities such as a Kroc Center or Heritage Health's Center for Healthy Living, the Living Strong facility will stand apart for its dedication to senior wellness.

Joseph moved to North Idaho from Southern California 10 years ago. He has personally maintained health and fitness routines for many years, but, work-wise, he has spent most of his life in construction management. He became certified as a personal trainer to deepen his knowledge of the science. He intended to help seniors, but that soon evolved.

"As far as I'm concerned it's God's work because I didn't plan it," he said. "It very quickly became this nonprofit project to put together a senior wellness center."

Living Strong North Idaho will also serve as a resource to help navigate Social Security, insurance, Medicare and more.

The new nonprofit is building its board of directors, on which Heather King of Coeur d'Alene will serve.

King is a nurse practitioner who specializes in regenerative and functional medicine. She said the goal of Living Strong North Idaho is to help people achieve greater functional independence, so they can age with grace rather than becoming dependent on assistive devices or experiencing too much pain to manage daily living.

She said a concept for something like Living Strong North Idaho is overdue.

"It’s going to be a huge benefit to North Idaho residents," she said. "There's nobody pushing truly healthy aging. You should be able to live on your own at 90 years old, make your own meals, do your own laundry and brush your own hair and teeth."

Services will be affordable; they won't replace primary care, but rather, a team will work to improve clients' functional capacity.

Joseph said he has not seen this done anywhere in the country in this way, because insurance doesn't cover upstream care.

"What pays for that is donors and grants and things of that nature," he said.

Joseph said he didn't have a specific reason for wanting to spearhead this initiative, but knows the community, with a high volume of retirees and aging adults, has a need.

"Every day, everywhere I go, I look around at a very unhealthy population," he said, "and the seniors are the most vulnerable."

Visit livingstrongnorthidaho.org or email [email protected] for details.