The Hartford Silberman Center of Excellence in Aging & Diversity is pleased to announce the first recipients of awards from our Research Pilot Grants program, developed with support from the John A Hartford Foundation to promote community-based research that advances psychosocial knowledge in aging and enhances direct and indirect practice with older adults and their families. Selected as part of a competitive process, two academic-community partnerships were awarded one-year grants of $7500 to support innovative, community-engaged research projects that are consistent with the Center’s mission and enhance the health and wellbeing of diverse, under-represented older adults and their families:
A Collaboratively Designed Media Based Intervention to
Address Memory and Aging Knowledge Gaps Among Latino Older Adults In
Urban Poor Communities
PI: Mari Umpierre, PhD, LCSW
Co-PI: Alma Collazo, LCSW
Older Latinos with dementia are an under-identified, under-served and stressed population, expected to grow rapidly over the next several decades. These older adults require health education to increase their knowledge about Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias, and to increase their participation in treatment and research to better address these conditions. The goal of this research pilot is to evaluate and refine a media-based intervention to address memory and aging knowledge gaps among Latino older adults in urban poor communities, and to explore best practices to disseminate, implement, and test the intervention’s impact and efficacy. The innovative health education/health literacy intervention “¿Que le pasa a mi memoria?/!What is going on with my memory?” , which includes a 2.5 minute video about memory and aging (in English and Spanish) informed by “entertainment-health education” strategies, has been developed using a CBPR framework and qualitative methods to incorporate health literacy needs and preferred health communication methods of Spanish-speaking/low English-speaking proficiency Latino senior center participants in an urban poor community. The pilot study will be conducted by two Latina social workers (co-Pis) in collaboration with a group of Latino seniors, clinicians, community stakeholders, and Memory Productions.
Case Management for Frail Elderly: A Program Evaluation of a Social Work Model
PI: Manoj Pardasani, PhD,
Co-PI: Judy Willig, LCSW
As the population ages rapidly and life expectancies increase, healthcare and social service providers are challenged to serve older adults along a continuum of care model. While community-based services are most common for healthier and ambulatory older adults, frail and homebound older adults have fewer options. Frequently, the absence of appropriate home-based services forces the frail, older adult into long-term care facilities. Home-based case management is increasingly used in the community and usually focuses primarily on controlling costs by reducing the frequency of hospitalizations and emergency medical interventions, and organizing care to maximize efficiency. This pilot project will collaborate with a Heights & Hills (one of the largest providers of case management services for older adults in Brooklyn, New York), to evaluate the health and well-being outcomes of a social work–focused, home-based case management program, specifically, self-perception of health, quality of life, life satisfaction, isolation, and frequency of hospitalizations and re-hospitalizations. The Heights & Hills case management model is directed by an LMSW, with two LMSW supervisors, an experienced intake worker who triages all new referrals, and 12 BA-level Case Managers. It is hoped that this study will help to demonstrate the impact of social-work led case management programs while highlighting areas of innovation and improvement to the model. The findings of this pilot study will be used to expand the project to include all 23 DFTA-funded case management agencies in New York City, and provide preliminary findings to support a larger NIH-funded intervention study.
The Hartford Silberman Center of Excellence in Aging and Diversity promotes the health and wellbeing of underserved and underrepresented older adults and their families through community-engaged education, research, and advocacy.