From: Best practice guidelines for mental health promotion programs: Older adults 55+ (© 2010, 2011 CAMH)
Goals and objectives
- to increase older adults’ ability to decipher the overwhelming body of information on health and wellness, thereby increasing their sense of control over their lives.
Description
Senior CAN was a wellness education program for older people. It provided education in an interactive setting and encouraged participants to try something new in each lesson. During 15 workshop sessions, older adults learned about and discussed nutrition, hygiene and fall prevention, among other topics (Guideline 5).
Senior CAN used volunteers from two groups: peer educators from the target audience over 55 years of age and volunteers from agencies that already provided service to elderly clients. Using a train-the-trainer model, volunteers were given basic training in teaching skills for conducting and facilitating an interactive class (Guideline 4). Representatives of ethnic minorities were trained to act as peer educators (Guideline 8).
To assess the overall impact of Seniors CAN, a pre-/post-test design was employed, using the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Pearlin & Schooler, 1978*) and the Mastery Scale (Russell et al., 1980*), along with a newly developed instrument to assess participants’ increased knowledge on nutrition, safety and wellness information presented during the lessons.
The program expanded to senior centres across Nevada, and the train-the-trainer workshops are expanding program delivery into other states (Guideline 11).
Additional information
| Start date |
1998 |
| Guideline 1: Audience, specific populations |
- older adults (aged 55 and over)
|
| Guideline 2: Protective and risk factors, and determinants of health |
Protective factors
- opportunites for lifelong learning
Risk factors
- stress
- loneliness
- sense of loss of control
Determinants of health
- economic status
- ethnicity
|
| Guideline 3: Multiple settings |
|
| Guideline 7: Multiple strategies |
- workshops
- community-based education in an interactive setting
- train-the-trainer
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| Guideline 9: Multiple stakeholders |
- University of Nevada Co-operative Extension
- nutrition professionals
- researchers of aging
- Las Vegas Housing Authority
- Nevada Housing and Neighborhood Development
|
| Guideline 11: Evaluation |
yes |
| Learn more |
-
Collins, C. (2003). Volunteers: The key to expanding extension programming for older adults. Journal of Extension, 41 (5), 1–4.
- Collins, C. (2006). Senior CAN: Enhancing independence for older adults. Journal of Extension, 39 (6), 1–4.
- Collins, C. (2006). Seniors CAN: Community-Based Education to Promote Independence for Older Adults. The LLI Review, 1, 60-68. Accessed February 9, 2011.
- Contact Claudia Collins, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NE (e-mail collinsc@unce.unr.edu)
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In Best practice guidelines for mental health promotion programs: Older Adults 55+