Community Health Education: Reaching Ethnically Diverse Elders

To address disparities in access to health care information, we developed a model program of community-based, health education workshops to be delivered in English and Spanish to older urban adults from diverse ethnic, cultural, and language backgrounds. The workshops were created through an interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty from seven health care professions and focused on three healthcare topics identified in Healthy People 2010: dementia and depression, stress reduction, and physical activity. The development of workshop content and structure, including didactic and interactive components, an approach to interdisciplinary student involvement, and program evaluation by clients and community center staff, are presented as a model for other educators. The workshops presented at five senior centers were attended by 1110 mostly female clients with an average age of 74 yrs and with a large proportion self-identified as of minority background. One hundred seven students from seven healthcare programs helped deliver the workshops. Interviews and surveys of the clients demonstrated that most had a positive learning experience, whereas the evidence of intent to take action on health care issues was less definitive. Analysis of student essays demonstrated increased student understanding of older adults and of community services. A website, Geriatric Educational Resources for Instructors and Elders (www.GERIE.org), was created to provide access to the instructional and resource materials used for the workshops, including presentation materials in Spanish. This model program may help address the substantial health education needs of a growing population of older adults from diverse ethnic, cultural, and language minorities.