photo credit Tri City Elder Coalition
Pathways to Positive Aging (PPA) enriches the lives of seniors in the ethnically-diverse Tri-City Area (the cities of Fremont, Newark, and Union City) of Northern California. A partnership between the Tri-City Elder Coalition (TCEC) and the City of Fremont Human Services Department, Pathways to Positive Aging seeks to improve the quality of life for seniors through political advocacy and by leveraging existing resources to develop programs in transportation, community engagement, and health and wellness for older adults.
Pathways to Positive Aging is an advocacy and community-development partnership, created in 2004 with a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Community Partnerships for Older Adults, to create and implement a strategic plan for older adults in the Tri-City Area. PPA is building a community that integrates seniors into the social and cultural dialogue and provides them with readily-accessible, culturally-sensitive, affordable, and effective services. PPA focuses on the availability and effective coordination of health and wellness for older adults. For example, through a partnership with the City of Fremont, PPA established the Senior Help Line, which provides Tri-City seniors and their families with a single resource enabling them to connect to local health, legal, and social services.
In order to accommodate the needs of all community members, the Senior Help Line provides multilingual services in Spanish, Mandarin, and Farsi, and also coordinates home visits, where the needs of seniors are assessed and matched with existing service providers. PPA also operates the Falls Prevention Program, which provides in-home support to help seniors remain safe and mobile in their homes for as long as possible. The Program coordinates home visits with nursing students from Unitek College, who help seniors initiate exercise regimens that maintain and improve mobility. In addition, the Falls Prevention Program arranges visits to seniors’ homes by mobility experts from LIFE Eldercare, a service provider for older adults. They conduct home safety assessments and make simple modifications, to reduce the risk of falls and give homebound seniors an added measure of safety.
Another PPA initiative, the Mobile Mental Health Program, also makes home visits that provide mental-health assessments and emotional support for seniors, an invaluable service for those suffering from isolation and dementia. The Board and Care Program has been created to enhance 120 existing Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs). Each RCFE houses between four and 10 seniors, and collectively they serve a total of over 1,000 seniors in the Tri-City Area. Pathways to Positive Aging hopes to improve this service by educating RCFE owners and operators, to better prepare them to address the health, nutritional, and emotional needs of RCFE residents.
PPA’ s mobility-focused work helps seniors get out of the house to run errands, visit doctors, and to ensure that seniors have access to other services. Mobility can be the missing link in the opportunities available to older adults. Programs supported by Pathways to Positive Aging include free classes, offered by public transportation authorities, on navigating local transit options. VIP Rides, run by LIFE Eldercare, provides volunteers to accompany seniors on paratransit services, helping them get on and off the bus, carry groceries, and communicate with the driver.
With a Caucasian minority, and large East Asian, Indian, and Afghan populations, the Tri-City Area is one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the country. As such, much of PPA’s work is focused on bridging cultural and language barriers, to ensure that senior Tri-City residents have a full understanding of and access to area services. PPA’s Afghan Health Promotion Program reaches out to older members of the Tri-City Area's sizable Afghan population, to help them understand, develop, and reach health-related goals. Another culturally-focused initiative, the Community Ambassador Program for Seniors (CAPS), recruits community ambassadors to reach out to seniors in a variety of ethnic and faith-based groups in the Tri-City Area. The CAPS program allows PPA to close cultural and linguistic gaps, and connect underserved seniors with vital social services.
With plans for hospital-to-home transition care, Pathways to Positive Aging continues to grow in scope and impact. Its success results from a focus on maximizing the effectiveness of existing services and forming new relationships among community service providers to fill holes in existing support. PPA’s culturally-sensitive approaches ensure that area residents of all backgrounds are supported by the community.
To learn more visit their website at http://www.tceconline.org/