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Martha (Marti) Y. Kubik, professor in the School of Nursing, explained how partnering pre-licensure nursing students with older adults who access services at senior centers and community dining sites benefits seniors and strengthens the future health care workforce.
On Thursday, March 7 the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions convened to discuss the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act (OAA). The OAA funds essential programs that keep older adults healthy, such as providing meals, preventative health services, transportation, senior centers, and caregiver support.
During the hearing, School of Nursing Professor Martha (Marti) Y. Kubik, PhD, served as an expert witness in favor of reauthorizing the OAA. Kubik’s unique expertise stems from her extensive work as a behavioral epidemiologist and advanced practice nurse and experience as a community-based primary care nurse practitioner. She has extensively studied health promotion and disease prevention across the lifespan.
In her testimony, Kubik shed light on an innovative approach that engages academic institutions to bring health profession students to community dining sites to provide health-related services that support the needs of seniors.
“As the older adult population continues to boom, access to primary care remains problematic, contributing to poor health outcomes and increased hospitalizations,” said Kubik in her opening testimony. “The time is right to explore new partnerships and more curated programming for the well-being of older adults.”
For this to be achieved, Kubik recommended that the reauthorization of the OAA include expansion of services offered to seniors through the Congregate Nutrition Services section of the OAA, which provides nutritious meals, health promotion programs and social engagement for seniors aged 60 and older in dining sites in neighborhood locations throughout the U.S.
“Expanding services at dining sites to address the increasingly complex health and social needs of a burgeoning aging population, most with multiple chronic conditions, is one approach to help seniors age well, while aging in place,” said Kubik
Kubik outlined one approach based on her pioneering pilot work called ageWELL, that placed nursing students in senior centers and dining sites once weekly for 6-12 weeks.
With funding from the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger and collaborations with partner organizations and nursing schools in DC and eastern Kentucky, Kubik led two studies in which supervising nursing faculty oversaw pre-licensure nursing students at senior dining sites. Students engaged in one-on-one visits with a senior, assisted with medication management, conducted blood pressure assessments, encouraged physical activity and nutritious eating, and provided health coaching guided by the senior’s priorities and goals.
The Kentucky study will be completed in May 2024. In the DC study, which was completed last year, seniors reported improved diets and increased physical activity, with blood pressure lower among seniors who participated in ageWELL compared to those who did not.
“Establishing academic-practice partnerships between senior centers and dining sites and health profession schools, particularly schools of nursing, to bring students to the community sites to provide health services holds great potential to improve health outcomes while preparing a health workforce better equipped to meet the needs of community residing adults for years to come,” said Kubik.
A recording of the hearing and Kubik’s testimony can be found here.