Geriatric Research Boosted by Grants
Helping Rural Seniors
Ithaca College has received one of 16 grants awarded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration–Bureau of Health Professions. The three-year, $317,000 grant will be used to develop an interdisciplinary geriatric training program for students, faculty, and rural allied health practitioners in occupational therapy, physical therapy, recreational therapy, and speech-language pathology and audiology.
The grant will be jointly administered by the Gerontology Institute and the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance. John Krout, director of the Gerontology Institute, and John Bonaguro, assistant dean of the school, will serve as coprincipal investigators on the project.
Its training curriculum will be developed by the College in collaboration with faculty from the Finger Lakes Geriatric Education Center. "Students and rural health practitioners will integrate classroom learning into clinical affiliation experiences at a wide range of health-care settings that serve older persons," says Krout. "In addition to strengthening inter- disciplinary training [at Ithaca College], the grant will improve the quality of care pro-vided to older persons in rural areas and develop a model curriculum that can be applied in other allied health programs." And although the grant lasts three years, he points out, it will affect rural health practices and students for years afterward.
Tracking Elders' Housing Choices
Meantime, Krout, along with faculty and students from the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance and Cornell University, has been working on the Pathways to Life Quality study in the first 5-year phase of an anticipated 20-year study. Nine to 10 faculty members from each institution are participating in the project, along with students from many fields.
The study, funded by an anonymous $1.57 million grant, focuses on three subjects: the differences between aging in various residential settings, from one’s own residence to a continuing care community; how people decide to change housing and how they adjust from one type to another; and how to improve the quality of life in all settings while keeping health care costs down.
Residents of Longview (ICQ, 1999/no. 1) and Kendal at Ithaca (a continuing care retirement community), as well as community residents and others, are among the participants in the study. It will ultimately include about 870 people aged 55 to 100. Interviews have been conducted with more than 300 men and women already; preliminary findings are answering some of the researchers’ questions about the decision-making process when it comes to changing homes. Students — who are majoring in a variety of disciplines, including physical therapy, occupational therapy, psychology, sociology, history, management, environmental design, and human development — have been trained to conduct the interviews and analyze data. More than 500 Ithaca College students may have the chance to participate during the life of the study; so far some 100 have been involved.
The information gathered will be useful for many purposes, as project manager Heidi Holmes explains: "We make it available to local and state politicians and policy makers, people who run housing facilities for older adults, and architecture and design firms, as well as the participants themselves — so they can think about some of their choices. This study will have a real value over a long period of time."
