The goals of this activity are for you to be able to identify diseases common to the elder population in your community; identify possible barriers to receiving treatment; Describe possible ways to educate,and to increase the awareness of elders in your community about what resources are available to them. Finally, you will create some ideas for how to assist elders in connecting to community resources which support their health and well-being.
To complete this discussion board, you will need to do some research into your community. You may need to call agencies, such as, hospitals, nursing homes, recreational centers. You may also need to consult internet databases for statistics and information about your particular community. This is a great chance to get to know our TWU Librarians. If you encounter difficulty finding the information you need, contact the library — they can teach you how to better mine the web, and the databases for specific information you need!
Part 1:
Ideally, you will need to do some work prior to posting. Before you make your first post, do a little research into your own community in both formal and informal ways. Examples of formal research includes: calling agencies and talking with agency representatives, looking at community statistics and reports, and talking with providers that serve the elderly population. Examples of informal research include: observing people in your neighborhood and town, and talking with friends and family who are seniors or caregivers of seniors. As you work through the list below, be sure to provide specific points for how you arrived at your conclusion by connecting your conclusions back to your textbook readings, and your formal/informal research. Be sure to include all of the following elements in your first post:
- Based upon your findings, what are the two health biggest needs of the older adult population in your community? Describe how you know this by relating back to your findings.
- What, if any, services (this can be mental health, health, community clinic, senior centers, etc) are available to meet these specific health needs of the elder population?
- According to your text, what specific barriers elders may encounter in attempting to access these types services/resources? (Barriers can be many things: financial, physical, social, cultural , etc.) Do any of these barriers exist in your community?
- Based upon what you have learned so far, describe an idea for each of the following: 1. How could (you!) a Health Educator educate elders in your community and/or increase their awareness about what resources are available to them? 2. How could (you again!) a Health Educator assist with connecting the elders in your community to resources to support their health and well-being (including social support and exercise). Include specific details for each of your ideas.
- Before you close your post, be sure to specifically reference your information sources (for example names and locations of agencies, reports used, place and setting for observing people)
Part 2: All right — now, for your second post. After you have read at least two classmates’ discussion boards make a second post describing
- What are the main similarities and differences between your post and the posts of your classmates?
- Do you see a predominate health issue for older adults being identified? Which one is it? Do the observations of you and your classmates sound similar to what you have read about health and aging so far in your text? Why or why not?
- Finally, choose the three best ideas (not yours) from the class that you think would help the population you identified. Name the people the ideas came from and how you would use these ideas to help the people in your population. (If you wish, you may use the rating feature (thumbs up, gold stars, just keep the ratting system pg rated) to note which of your classmates posts you learned from the most)
Part three: Acknowledgement. Post to at least two of your classmates about what you learned from their post/ideas. Tell them what you learned and how you might apply it.
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