{"doi":"10.1111/jgs.18313","title":"Lack of geriatricians in <scp>aging‐related</scp> national media talks","abstract":"Geriatricians are not adequately represented in national panels, health department guidelines, and the lay press.1 People, from numerous non-geriatric medicine fields, produce podcasts, promote products, and provide advice on aging issues that may be uninformed by expertise. We sought to better understand the aging-related content and backgrounds of experts portrayed by a leading national online lecture, TED Talks. TED talks are freely distributed under the slogan “ideas worth spreading” and are available on multiple platforms: Ted.com, YouTube, and podcasts.2 They are immensely popular, with the videos having been viewed more than a billion times online. Speaker backgrounds vary widely and include Nobel and Pulitzer Prize, Oscar, Grammy, and Emmy winners. It is important to distinguish between TED and TEDx Talks. TED is developed on a national platform, while TEDx is set up by local volunteer organizers without national supervision. Quality control has been a major issue as speakers are not always fully vetted (e.g., non-medical speakers providing medical advice). Unvetted speakers have reached both the TED and TEDx stages, but it is believed to be more frequent with TEDx as quality control lies solely in the hands of the local event organizers.3 We performed a search of all aging-related content produced by the TED Talk media and communication platform, from October 2006 to December 2021. Search terms included: aging, aged, seniors, older adults, geriatrics, geriatric medicine, geriatrician. We selected TED Talks (national) but excluded TEDx (local) Talks. The rationale was two-fold: (1) We anticipated better vetting of speakers from national groups. (2) A national cohort would reflect more generalizable findings instead of local subject-promoting enthusiasts. Data was collected examining: (1) content of lecture, (2) number of views, (3) date of activity, (4) speaker, and (5) presented background. When the background was unclear, we utilized LinkedIn profiles for further clarity. Descriptive frequencies were utilized for viewership. Qualitative analysis of lecture content (pertinence to aging-related or geriatrics) and presenter background was conducted using constant comparative thematic analysis between two coders, with a third coder available for tiebreak.4 Using the search terms “aging,” “seniors,” and “geriatrics,” 60 TED talks were determined to provide relevant geriatrics related content. Thematic analysis revealed major themes of (1) Delaying aging/living longer (e.g., roadmap to end aging, living to 100 years); (2) Wisdom from aging (e.g., how to live passionately no matter your age); (3) Testing for age-related diseases (e.g., Parkinson's); (4) Cures for common age-related diseases (Alzheimer's disease, vision loss, arthritis); (5) Older adult finance; and (6) Dying and Hospice. Among speakers, there were no board-certified geriatricians and only one palliative care certified physician. Backgrounds varied widely and included writer, actors, activist, filmmaker, molecular biologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, lawyer, philosopher (Table 1), healthcare professionals included neurologist, neuroscientist, developmental psychologist, and palliative care physician. Among the aging-related content in popular TED talks, no board-certified geriatricians have been tapped to provide expertise. Although capable, nationally renown geriatricians are available, most speakers are not from medical backgrounds and have unclear expertise in aging. This lack of geriatrics expertise may negatively impact age-friendly care and adversely affect older adults if misinformation is followed. It is unclear if geriatricians are applying to speak at TED talks, but through word of mouth, several have applied.5 There are also fewer geriatricians than other occupations (e.g., entertainment, journalism), which might account for the higher representation in other fields. From a content perspective, many topics were focused on avoiding aging altogeth","journal":"Journal of the American Geriatrics Society","year":2023,"id":385989,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9601,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1154689,"name":"Diana Medved","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":302259,"name":"Lee A. Lindquist","orcid":"0000-0002-4290-5081","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":969626,"name":"Anna Liggett","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":6,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:17:56.803401Z","pmid":"36898079","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}