The Legacy of Helen Q. Kivnick

Helen Q. Kivnick had an abundance of gifts—brilliance as a scholar, talent as a musician, and a passionate commitment to making the world a better and more joyful place for others of all ages. Her middle name “Quintessa,” meaning essence, or something in its purest form, captures her warm spirit, generosity, intelligence, compassion, humor, and community-mindedness. Helen passed away on September 14, 2020. While Helen’s passing leaves deep sadness for people who knew and loved her, her legacy lives on, through her writings, her music, and the programs she developed. In the Jewish tradition, it is proper to say “May her memory be for a blessing.” What this means is “May you be like Helen.” May you remember her by carrying on her legacy in vital aging, music, and social justice. Kivnick, born in Philadelphia, was among the first undergraduate women at Yale University (BA, 1972). She earned her MA (1975) and PhD (1980) from the University of Michigan. As a graduate student, Kivnick studied the psychological aspects of grandparenthood, which led to her long-term interest in aging. Kivnick was a licensed clinical psychologist and a licensed clinical social worker. She worked for over 30 years in practice, programming, research, and teaching focused on the promotion of healthy life-cycle development, the arts, and intercultural relations. Since 1990, she was Professor of Social Work at the University of Minnesota. Her honors and awards include the Community Service Award (University of Minnesota, 2002), Josie R. Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award (University of Minnesota, 2007), and Gerontologist of the Year (Minnesota Gerontological Society, 2017). Helen was also a Fellow of The Gerontological Society of America (2009). She served as Associate Editor for The Gerontologist from 2011 until her death. In Vital Involvement in Old Age (Erikson et al., 1986), Kivnick collaborated with renowned developmentalists Erik Erikson and Joan Erickson, reconceptualizing their theory of lifelong psychosocial development to clearly operationalize psychosocial health at each stage of the life cycle. From this work, the Vital Involvement (VI) construct emerged. Kivnick acknowledged that the focus of her professional life had always been the VI construct—even before the term VI was coined. VI is a strength-based model that identifies how meaningful engagement with the world outside the self supports the psychosocial well-being of older adults by offsetting the impact of physical, cognitive, and social losses, and societal constraints. Kivnick described her career—“a deceptively disorganized collection of fits, starts, and sparkles”—as a continuous spiraling exploration, understanding, and practical implementation of VI. Although her professional work is described as musical and artistic, psychotherapeutic, ethnographic, research and theory, social justice and community-based, all of it reflects the fundamental construct of VI. Kivnick conducted a 30-year qualitative research project that identified 15 Elder Role Models (ERMs). The ERMs (n = 15) were identified by someone who knew them well as individuals (aged 65 or older) who embody at least one of the following features: (a) “When I get to be that age, I want to be just like him”; (b) “She isn’t any more debilitated than my mother is. But somehow she knows something I wish I could bottle and feed to my mother three times a day”; and (c) “He has so many conditions and receives so many services that whenever I prepare for a home visit, I get tired just organizing everything I have to document. And still, whenever I leave from seeing him, I feel inspired” (Kivnick et al., 2019). The purpose of the project was to understand the dimensions of VI, as demonstrated by these individuals over their individual life cycles, and the dynamics implemented by these individuals to maintain VI in older adulthood, despite increasing disability and frailty. In a recent article, Kivnick and colleagues (2019) used analyses of a narrative case study of an ERM to outline the five elements of VI, including: Enacting personal values/strengths/interests: “the essential contribution to individual well-being of older adults’ participation in the decisions and behaviors most closely related to individual identity” (p. 5). Person–environment reciprocity: “In each relationship the self is her/his own ‘person’ and simultaneously the partner’s ‘environment’” (p. 7). Utilizing personal and environmental supports: This element expands the familiar formal and informal supports to include “often-overlooked elements in and characteristics of the sociospatial environment” (p. 8). Enriching the environment: This aspect of vital involvement emphasizes the individual’s “connection with perpetuity” (p. 8), reflecting Erikson’s concern for maintaining the social, physical, and natural environment on which individual survival depends. Experience-based perspective: This element, drawing heavily on Erikson’s psychosocial theme of Integrity and Despair, is “essential to the wisdom we have come to associate with a good old age” (p. 8). Vital Involvement Practice (VIP) is a capacity-building approach Kivnick developed to direct practice and programming work with frail elders (e.g., developing individual care plans; individual counseling; implementing culture change in residential facilities; designing programs and environments to promote vitality and sense of purpose), new retirees, and clients of all ages. In 2013, Helen Kivnick and Linda Davis formed a collaboration founded in their shared commitment to creative activity and vital aging. They cofounded the Aging, Wellness, Arts Foundation™, a nonprofit to promote the arts and VIP as a means to promote health and engagement in life to its fullest. Two programs are exemplars of their work to translate VI into practice. The Vital Involvement in Service Coordination-enriched Low-income Senior Housing was an action-research project promoting vital involvement as part of the service enrichment/service coordination offered by a string of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-funded, nonprofit housing facilities. The project involved training over 70 building service coordinators in vital involvement practice; implementing creative wellness programming (including resident arts training and participation) at selected facilities; and ongoing VI supervision and participant observation at case study facility. Service Coordinators submitted monthly stories describing VI demonstrated by or promoted among residents of their buildings. This work extended to 22 states and more than 5,000 low-income older adults. Over a 4-year period, more than 3,000 stories were collected and thematic analysis of the stories identified service coordinator behaviors that effectively promote resident VI was underway. The authors used grounded theory analysis to identify sequential stages of service coordinators’ VI promotion. The Art, Wellness and Vital Involvement in Aging™ (AWVIA) program promotes the arts (creativity) and vital involvement as essential components of healthy living. The project connected teaching artists with affordable senior communities and offered VI practice training and technical assistance for teaching artists and service coordinators. Kivnick served as Co-PI on the National Endowment for the Arts funded quasi-experimental study, The Impact Assessment of Music Engagement Programs and Vital Involvement Model on Low-income Elders in Subsidized Housing Communities, which measured the effect participation in the AWVIA program has on the mental and social health of low-income elders. A sample of 135 residents at 10 sites was matched with that of 135 control residents at 10 control sites. A weekly music intervention with a professional musician was offered to participants for 3 months. Outcome measures for physical, emotional, cognitive, and social engagement showed significant positive effects among music participants that were not seen in the control groups. This study adds to the evidence that arts engagement programs can improve health and wellness among low-income older adults. Findings will be useful in informing policymakers of the importance of including arts engagement in the services offered to low-income HUD residents (Chang et al., 2018). Kivnick was a trained musician who believed in the power of music to foster deep and healing connections among diverse peoples from all walks of life and to advance social justice. In 1984, Kivnick and her husband Gary Gardner travelled to South Africa to learn about the traditional singing of the Black community. Kivnick stayed up all night to judge traditional Zulu choral singing long before Ladysmith Black Mombazo was made famous by Paul Simon. She and Gardner produced two albums from the innovative recordings they made and the resulting “Mbube! Zulu Men’s Singing Competition” was nominated for a 1987 Grammy Award. Mbube means “lion” in Zulu and the genre refers to a male vocal music ensemble that is traditionally performed a cappella. Kivnick provided program notes and ethnological notes, texts, and translations of the Zulu passages. Her book, Where is the Way: Song and Struggle in South Africa (Penguin Books, 1990), documented the role of singing in Black life under apartheid. For 18 years (1991–2008), Kivnick founded and directed CitySongs: Healthy Youth and Community Development through Music, a pop music choral program for at-risk inner-city youth. The CitySongs program was a collaborative university and community program, building on principles of vital involvement, strength-based social work practice, community and prevention psychology, and music education. Kivnick chose music for CitySongs focusing on love, equity, and justice, using the words of the people she interviewed to celebrate diversity. A University of Minnesota colleague remembers the program as the embodiment of a community—“the voices raised together, singing about life and convictions for the future.” Her efforts helped bridge racial and ethnic relations in the Twin Cities through the transformative impact of music long before the “Black Lives Matter” movement by connecting the kids with support and educational opportunities that changed their lives. In 2014, Kivnick became a founding Advisory Board member of the Giving Voice Chorus, a unique Minneapolis community choir for people with dementia, care partners, and community volunteers that has inspired a social movement with over 60 choirs nationally and internationally. Once the choir was established, her role shifted to doing participant observation for qualitative evaluation of the program’s process, products, and behaviors of participants. In 2011, Kivnick was invited to serve as Associate Editor for Humanities and Arts for The Gerontologist. She was ideal for this role given her experience as a researcher in the arts, her knowledge of key scholars in this area, and her desire to use her creativity to expand one of the leading journals on aging, The Gerontologist, in a new direction. The new section promoted scholarship on aging, humanities, and the arts as an important thread in the fabric of the study of aging (Kivnick & Pruchno, 2011). As part of her tenure in the Associate Editor role, Kivnick established On Film and Digital Media, a segment of the journal devoted to reviewing new films and other digital media. Working with Jim Vanden Bosch, Kivnick initiated “Coming to a Theater Near You,” which reviews the ways public audiences respond to popular films about aging. With Rick Scheidt, Kivnick launched “Tis a Far Better Thing,” focused on professional, educational, and training use of film and video, bringing these advances to academic circles, researchers, and advocates (Scheidt et al., 2012). These aspects of The Gerontologist are much appreciated by its readers. After stepping down from her role as Associate Editor for Humanities and Arts in 2018, Kivnick continued to serve as Associate Editor for On Film and Digital Media (2019–2020). She worked tirelessly to ensure inclusiveness of humanistic perspectives to broaden our focus beyond prediction and explanation to concerns with human experience, meaning, and struggles. Her leadership was critical in promoting high-quality scholarship on aging, humanities, and the arts within The Gerontological Society of America. Kivnick was a gifted and inspiring teacher, mentor, and friend. Students and colleagues mention her intelligence, integrity, and the extraordinary caring (i.e., heart!) evident in her teaching and mentoring. She had an engaging teaching style and was known to spontaneously burst into a song to illustrate something she was talking about in relation to human development. She had a smile that could light up a room. Although her passion for her work led to long hours (80–100 hr a week), she was joyful, funny, and had a great laugh. Her colleagues note that she was a role model and force for good with her tremendous positive energy. She always created space to make everyone feel welcome and part of a community. Her generous spirit gave her an innate awareness when others were struggling and she was always ready to offer support to ease their troubles. In May 2020, Kivnick and her husband established the Dr. Helen Q. Kivnick and Dr. Gary M. Gardner Fund for the Arts and Social Work at the University of Minnesota Foundation. The purpose of the fund is to support an annual “Arts and Social Work” salon in the School of Social Work that will include a performance/presentation by a professional artist, and a mini-lecture by social work faculty to support social work discourse presentation. In reflecting on her teaching and research, Kivnick summed up her own experience-based perspective: “Older adulthood is not all about reminiscence. It is also about doing the best we can, with what we have in the time that remains.” As she noted, perhaps this is the real meaning of Old Age’s central struggle to balance Integrity with Despair. In this, as in so many things, Kivnick was an ERM. Others learned the most about her vital involvement theory by watching how she lived her own life. After being diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer, Kivnick created an online journal to share insightful reflections on her illness, treatment, and thoughts along the way. Her writing was masterful—inspiring, creative, and so generous in spirit in the face of the uncertainties of her life. She coped with her complex and changing medical needs with resiliency, creativity, and good humor. In 2017, she wrote in her online journal that her future was “far more unpredictable than ever before” and she was “trying to think and live my life with integrity, in ways that allow me to maintain my vital involvement in the world outside.” (Aren’t we all?)

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.