Bill Thomas: Elderhood Rising: The Dawn of a New World Age

June 23, 2011 by Gail
Filed under VidStyle

Bill Thomas, M.D. is an international authority on geriatric medicine and eldercare. He is the founder of the ‘Eden Alternative’, a philosophy and programme that de-institutionalised nursing homes in the USA and worldwide over the past 20 years. He is a self-described ‘Nursing Home Abolitionist’.

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ABOUT Bill Thomas

“He is also creator of the Green House (Nursing Home), a radically new approach to long term care where nursing homes are torn down and replaced with small, home-like environments where people can live a full and interactive life.

Bill Thomas, M.D., is not one to accept the status quo. He’s an energetic, unconventional Harvard-trained physician has come up with a long list of ideas for reforming elderly care, all aimed at not just enriching the lives of seniors but also allowing seniors to enrich the lives of their juniors.

He says, “aging and the aged are not, as so often supposed, the cause of our problems—they are and always have been the source of answers we need.” Bill and his wife Judith Meyers-Thomas developed the ‘Eden Alternative’ in the early 1990s as a philosophy to de-institutionalise long term care facilities by alleviating the “three plagues” of boredom, helplessness and loneliness.

The Eden Alternative put forward a critique of the status quo in long-term care and offered a creative way to “change the culture” of nursing homes by bringing growth and laughter into the lives of elders. The philosophy called for fundamental changes in the relationship between staff and management and introduced pets, gardens and children to nursing homes.

Bill founded the Eden Alternative non-profit organisation in 1994, which has grown to include affiliates in Japan, Australia, Scandinavia, Europe, Canada and the United Kingdom as well as the fifty US states. He continues to serve as its President.”

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