- Utah ranks 4th for healthy seniors.
- United Health Foundation's report highlights Utah's low senior poverty but rising rates nationwide.
- Community engagement and policy improvements are crucial for senior health, says Dr. Ravi Johar.
SALT LAKE CITY — Bonnie Shepherd's got a schedule that could frazzle a much younger person.
The Salt Lake octogenarian has a Pilates class four times a week and walks on the other days, meets friends at least weekly for lunch, facilitates three support groups, serves on the board of the Utah Alzheimer's Association and has served on the board of the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (which her husband Ned had before he died).
She also goes with a pal to any Jazz concert she can find. She serves, too, on the Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias State Council, one of the members who helped write the state's forward-looking plan to deal with the expected tsunami of age-related neurocognitive decline as Utah ages.
She and two other friends check in with each other at least daily. Then there's family time. She had been married and he was widowed, so when she and Ned married, they created a blended family that included the two children they each had and she's still busy doing family things with them and with her extended family.
In her "spare time," she reads avidly — she alternates between books that are simply fascinating like a recent one by the founder of PayPal and "trash," which she also enjoys. She consumes the content of the New York Times and local news daily and when she's cleaning she listens to books on tape. She loves jigsaw puzzles, but has to pick her moments, because once she starts one, she has a very hard time stopping, she said.
What doesn't she do herself?
"I hire someone to wash my windows. And I don't do yard work now."
Shepherd will be 84 this summer.
And exhausting as it all sounds, she's adopted and adapted to many of the habits keys experts recommend if you want to age well and keep your wits about you. There are proactive steps people can take to stay healthy, including reducing risk of cognitive decline.
"I just think that it's really important to take care of yourself and to live as long as you can, as healthy as you can for yourself and for your family," she said. "I want to be active and have a good life, not a sick life."
Ranking policies, communities for senior health
Right now, there are more than 59 million older adults in the United States, some healthy and active like Shepherd, and a lot of them not. Aging well is a partnership that includes individuals and the choices they make about how they will live, as well as the community in which they find themselves. There's a lot to consider when it comes to what leads older adults to flourish or flounder, from genetics to environment to activity level, social engagement, public policies, poverty and more.
Every year, United Health Foundation issues America's Health Ranking and for 13 years has looked at the health of those 65 and older. The "2025 Senior Report" found Utah does pretty well — it's No. 4 among states on the flourish side of things, behind Vermont, Colorado and Washington. Using only publicly available data from 28 sources, the report considered 55 measures and overall found nationwide more social connection and less early death, which means those 65-74 in this report.
But the report also noted persistent mental and behavioral health challenges for older American adults. Drug-related deaths have increased, a category that considers both prescription and nonprescription. Dr. Ravi Johar, chief medical officer at UnitedHealthcare, told Deseret News that many of those deaths are due to changes in metabolism and medication interactions. Sometimes, a person doesn't remember taking a drug and takes too much, as well, he added.
Suicide rates are also up. Both suicide and drug-related deaths are at their highest level the annual assessment has seen. The report noted that chronic disease accounted for six of the top 10 causes of premature death among those 65 to 74 in 2023. Better news, though, is that premature deaths have fallen to prepandemic rates, when the numbers surged across the country.
Poverty has risen and is a reality for about 1 in 9 older adults. Said Johar, "Poverty impacts health in ways that people don't even understand. Being able to get healthy food, fresh fruit, being able to fill your medications, being able to have a safe, healthy living environment, all of those are factors." Financial resources, he added, are essential to good, safe transportation and communication tools like high-speed internet.
Falls and obesity are both challenges, but the numbers have been stable for a few years.
While Shepherd is very active and engaged, lots of older adults are not. Johar called loneliness and isolation "a real problem among seniors especially." About a third are obese and fewer than a third meet the recommended activity level of 150 minutes of moderate activity a week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, along with muscle strengthening twice a week.
Where Shepherd really stands out is in community engagement and voluntarism. Those are among the benefits the report notes in terms of contributing to better health outcomes like reducing risk of disability, depression and dementia.
Johar said the data should help inform public policy and improve senior health. "The needs of seniors are different than some of the needs for other populations," he said. "It's important to look and see how our seniors are getting the care that they need."
Some Utah specifics
While Utah has more geriatricians than it did, up 41%, it is No. 38 nationally, with 28.3 per 100,000 adults age 65 and older, while the U.S. average is nearly 40. And experts say the entire country could use more clinicians trained to provide care to older adults.
Fewer Utah older adults live in poverty, compared to most states, coming in at No. 5, but the poverty rate increased 34% between 2018 and 2023, to just over 1 in 12 senior adults.
