At Home, On Air: A Conversation with Jessica Bibbo, Ph.D.

At Home, On Air: A Conversation with Jessica Bibbo, Ph.D.

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Pet Ownership is ‘Medication

Listen to the conversation…

And check out the At Home, On Air Podcast – listen to our previous conversations with guest speakers from a variety of fields and find us easily wherever you listen to podcasts!


Thank You to Our Featured Guest: Jessica Bibbo (and her adorable cat Nalarama), Ph.D., Research Scientist | Center for Research and Education Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging

Thank You to Our Forum Host: Susanne Stadler, Architect, Executive Director | At Home With Growing Older

At Home, On Air Conversation Description:

Many of us experience the benefits of owning a pet. They connect us, motivate us to walk, keep us on a schedule and more. In this conversation with Jessica Bibbo, we learn about her recently concluded research study that looked at pet ownership benefits, challenges and resources in an aging society.

The results provide empirical evidence that pets do impact the health and healthcare decisions of older adults and make a strong case for making pet ownership part of conversations about senior housing, caregiving, transportation and more.

Jessica talks about the study and her hope of how this might change the conversation about health determinants in older adults.

More About Jessica Bibbo:

Jessica Bibbo, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist in the Center for Research and Education at Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging, where they work on research and evaluation studies to better serve older adults and their caregivers. Dr. Bibbo’s research focuses on aging, caregiving and human-animal interaction. Their work investigates the impact of pet ownership and the human-animal bond on the lives of older adults and their families. They have published peer-reviewed articles on the impact of older adults’ pets on the instrumental and emotional experiences of the older adults’ caregivers. Prior to joining Benjamin Rose in 2018, they were a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Organization for Human-Animal Interaction Research and Education lab in the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University. They earned their Ph.D. in Human Environmental Science at the University of Missouri in 2016 where they were a graduate research assistant at the Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction.


The original, live conversation was recorded on:  Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 5:30 PM PST.

Episode 53: Pet Ownership is 'Medication'

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