In St. Louis, a team of students aboard a well-equipped van visits senior centers, a nursing home, a church, and other sites, learning to conduct comprehensive, hourlong geriatric assessments.
The team — future doctors, social workers, psychologists, and therapists — looks for such common problems as frailty, muscle weakness, and cognitive decline. The patients they evaluate, free of charge, receive printed plans to help guide their care.
Across Oregon, community health workers have enrolled in an eight-hour online training program — with sections on Medicare and Medicaid, hospice and palliative care, and communication with patients and families — to help them work with older adults.
“We need these front-line public health workers to know how to provide age-friendly care,” said Laura Byerly, the geriatrician at the Oregon Health & Science University who leads its efforts.
And in Louisville, the same federally funded program provides geriatrics training across Kentucky. Sometimes, though, it takes a less formal approach.
Sam Cotton, the social worker who directs its dementia program, recently heard from a local Methodist church whose parishioners were caring for relatives with dementia. Could someone talk to the congregation about this demanding role? Cotton, an assistant professor at the University of Louisville, said sure, she would be there.
These programs, and 39 more like them across the country, aim to address an alarming …