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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Community Connections: Profile of a vulnerable, at-risk older population

Nadine Sahyoun, PhD, RD and Ucheoma O. Akobundu, MS. University of Maryland, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, 0112 Skinner Hall, College Park, MD 20742, (301) 405-8774, nsahyoun@umd.edu

The home delivered meal program (HDM) of the U.S. Administration on Aging has traditionally served frail homebound elderly with chronic diseases. However, older adults recently discharged from an acute care hospital, are a vulnerable, at-risk population, who has not been served adequately due to limited or lack of coordination between health care settings and community services. Community Connection was designed as a demonstration project to increase coordination of efforts between hospitals and community services and provide HDM and other services to hospital-discharged older adults. This system change was implemented and evaluated in six U.S. states within 6 HDM programs. Participants recruited into the program (n=464) were administered a battery of questions to assess their health, physical and cognitive functioning, state of emotional health and extent of social support. The results showed that 56% of participants lived alone, 41% were socially isolated or at high risk, 36% had poor emotional health, 43% had depressive symptoms, 23% had poor cognitive functioning and 82% had at least one limitation in activities of daily living. In addition, 17% of participants had been worried during their hospital stay, about getting enough food when they returned home. In a logistic regression model, food anxiety was significantly associated with younger age (p=0.005), lower educational attainment (p=0.01), inability to prepare food (p=0.006) and having depressive symptoms (p=0.03). This project identifies a vulnerable, potentially underserved population, and points to the importance of developing a systems change that will result in providing needed services immediately upon hospital discharge.

Learning Objectives: Learning Objectives