Retirement Living TV has jumped into the booming online health information market with the launch of Our Freedom Years, a site focused on health issues related to aging. This vertical market is surging as Boomers age and turn to the web for information.

Retirement Living is owned by Erickson Retirement Communities, which also publishes the Erickson Tribune monthly newspaper that circulates in the company’s communities. A press release says Our Freedom Years will draw from all those resources.

A 2007 Harris Poll showed that 52 percent of Americans “sometimes or frequently” go online for health information, up from 29 percent in 2001. Other media companies targeting the market include Hearst Magazines, which beefed up its online health presence last year by acquiring Real Age, and Healthline.com, which last year raised $25 million in new capital to fund expansion. AOL founder Steve Case has established a major presence in online health with Revolution Health, an online brand focused on healthy lifestyles. These newer sites are getting traction despite the presence of strong, entrenched online names like WebMd, the Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health.

The 50+ market has a new free B2B information resource in Tom Mann’s Mature Market Experts. Tom is the former publisher of The Erickson Tribune and now runs TR Mann Consulting, which focuses on real estate, media, and the senior marketplace.

Tom says he envisions MME as an online network for professionals working in the 50+ market: “Mature Market Experts connects investors, bankers, real estate developers, consumer goods companies, health care professionals, journalists and marketing experts who are interested in serving the senior marketplace. In short, if you serve, market to, or write about people who are 50+, this is the group for you.”

The goal of the group is to help members:

• Reach other members of Mature Market Experts
• Accelerate careers/business through referrals from Mature Market Experts members
• Know more than a name - view rich professional profiles from fellow Mature Market Experts Group members

If you’re interested in joining, go to Tom Mann’s LinkedIn profile, and scroll down until you see the Mature Market Experts badge. Click on the bade and send an email explaining that you’d like to join and describe your connection to the 50+ marketplace.

The MME blog will feature a number of writers on the 50+ market, who will be commenting on trends and industry news. The site also will serve as a collection point for industry-related events. I’m planning to contribute to the site, and Tom already has lined up several other contributors, including:

• Eric Schubert, Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs at Ecumen. Eric also has a wonderful blog called Changing Aging.
• Dan Rexford, Partner, Equity Partners Inc. Dan’s company helps distressed businesses either recover or sell. In addition, Dan is the former Executive Vice President of Marketing at Erickson Retirement Communities . . . with over 18 years in the retirement community industry.
• Jodi Rudick, author. Jodi is putting the finishing touches on a book to be published by Human Kinetics focused on programming/marketing recreation services to baby boomers.

Tom’s still looking for other contributors, especially experts in medicine, finance and social work. If you are interested, drop him a note at trmann@verizon.net.

If you live Southern California or plan to be there May 9th, you’ll want to know about the UCLA Technology & Aging Conference. The one-day event looks at medical and consumer technology aimed at improving life as we age, and how the changes will influence the future of health care. Notables on the program include Gary W. Small MD, director of UCLA’s Center on Aging, and Eric Dishman, who directs Intel’s product research and innovation group. Star power will be supplied via a luncheon address from actor and author Kirk Douglas, who will talk about the emotional and physical challenges of stroke recovery.

Do we really become more set in our ways as we age? Not according to a recent SecurePath by Transamerica survey. The C.U.R.E. Retirement Study (change, uncertainty, risk and retirement education) probed the attitudes of pre-retirees about how they deal with factors outside their control, such as the economy. The survey responses seem to contradict the stereotypes:

• Two-thirds (65 percent) say they’ve gotten better at handling periods of change or uncertainty as they age.
• Half (50 percent) even say they are at their best during times of change and 50 percent find change exciting.
• When asked about their personal philosophy when it comes to finances and money, more than half (58 percent) can relate to the notion of “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and 48 percent agree with the statement “No risk, no reward”.
• Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of pre-retirees say they will handle the change and uncertainty associated with growing older well and two-thirds (65 percent) are confident that even with the uncertainty associated with retirement, everything will work out.

The findings are based on more than 2,000 interviews with working adults over age 50.

If you’d like to know how your change profile stacks up against the averages, you can take the risk quiz here.

The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) wants your Beatles memories. Working with scientists at the University of Leeds, the BA is running an online survey aimed at creting the world’s largest database of “autobiographical memories” every undertaken. The timing: 44 years ago this month, the Beatles occupied the top five positions on Billboard’s Top Pop singles chart. According to a BA press release:

Psychologists know that certain cues are successful at triggering the recollection of events from our lives – our ‘autobiographical memories’. Music in particular has a strong emotive and recollective power in relation to our long-term memory.

Whilst the majority of memory studies look at ‘flash-bulb’ events such as the shuttle disaster this will be the first time psychologists have attempted to gather a huge database of memories by tapping into the unique global influence the Beatles have in shaping our personal identities. As global pop icons, the impact of the life, times and music of the Beatles spans different generations, countries and cultures.

The results of the Magical Memory Tour will help further our understanding of how children develop a capacity for memory, how adults process memory and how memory changes in older adulthood.

The survey is aimed at anyone, anywhere, who has a memory relating to the Beatles – you don’t have to be a fan to get involved! Participants should think about the first thing that comes to mind from their life that is related to the Beatles. It may be a very vivid memory relating to a particular album, song, news story - or even band member.

You can find the survey at the Magical Memory Tour site.

“In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.”

–New York Times columnist David Brooks on The Great Forgetting.