While most people will be watching the Super Bowl Sunday, Rachael Watman is rooting for another team: the latest Hartford Change AGEnts Action Awards winners.I am not going to win many fans here: I don’t watch the Super Bowl nor do I really like football.
My husband just confirmed my suspicion that the Seattle team and somebody from New England are playing Sunday; he then schooled me on the details regarding “Deflategate.”
Clearly, my interest lies elsewhere, like older adults. The most exciting competition I’ve seen lately was the awarding of the second round of Hartford Change AGEnts Action Awards. And the teams I’m really rooting for are the interprofessional teams led by Hartford alumni who won the most recent round of one-year grants of up to $10,000 to achieve meaningful practice or policy change that will improve the health of older adults and/or their families.
The Hartford Change AGEnts Action Awards are one of many offerings of the Hartford Change AGEnts Initiative. We recently selected nine new AGEnt Action Awardees to join the first cohort selected in the Spring 2014.
Drafting a new squad of AGEnt Action Awardees, combined with the national hype around the Super Bowl, inspired me to take a closer look at football and an interesting area of intersect.
A recent episode of Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports on HBO featured the Chicago Bears, winners of Super Bowl XX, who have now become, according to Gumbel, “the game’s ultimate cautionary tale.” Many of the 1985 Bears suffer from irreversible cognitive and physical impairments, with nearly half the players suing the NFL. They claim that football destroyed their minds, bodies, or both.
For example, 1985 Bears Quarterback Jim McMahon has concussion-related, early-onset dementia. McMahon shared, "When my friends call and leave me a message ... I'll read it and delete it before I respond and then I forget who called and left me a message."
McMahon, who is 55, is forthright about his memory loss and subsequent depression and suicidal thoughts. It’s hard to watch McMahon talk about his reliance on his girlfriend--his caregiver—to keep him alive.
And it’s heartbreaking to watch her speak on the challenges of caring for someone with depression and memory loss.
McMahon’s cognitive impairment and depression reminds me of the importance of our Change AGEnts and their work to improve health care. For example, recent Action Awardee Eran Metzger, MD, of the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Boston, and his project MAking Real Progress in Emotional Health (MARPEH) centers around the fact that depression affects 7 million older Americans, yet only one in 10 seek treatment. Moreover, mild cognitive impairment affects 14-18 percent of those 70 and older; in 2011, 4.5 million adults over 65 were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Metzer’s Change AGEnts Action Award will integrate depression and cognitive support services into routine care for low-income seniors living independently in supportive housing. Based on the Healthy IDEAS evidence-based model, housing staff will be trained to recognize depression and cognitive impairment and a social worker will improve coordination with primary care treatment.
Programs such as MARPEH would prove of great benefit to the older McMahons of the world.
Other programmatic touchdowns funded in this round of Action Awards include:
- Improving Access, Communication, and Efficiency of Care: Implementation of Telemedicine Capabilities between a Hospital and Skilled Nursing Facility, quarterbacked by Winnie Suen, MD, Inova Fairfax Hospital, Falls Church, VA, and Steven Dean, MS, Inova Health System, Falls Church, VA. Their Action Award-winning project will enhance communication between Inova Hospital and skilled nursing facility providers who care for patients after leaving the hospital. The results will offer a model for how other health systems and programs can incorporate telemedicine to support caring for older adults and serve as fertile ground to broadcast future innovation.
- A Hidden Safety Resource: Family Caregiver Participation in Medication Reconciliation Across Care Transitions, captained by Mary Dolansky, PHD, RN, Case Western Reserve University, Francis Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Cleveland, OH, and Stefan Gravenstein, MD, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, OH. Their project aims to implement, evaluate and disseminate a program to help educate patients and informal caregivers to be engaged in medication safety during transitions of care when medication errors are most common and costly.
Like they say, you can’t tell the players without a program. So even though the clock is running down, leaving me with only enough time to cheer for three of our interprofessional teams here, I encourage you to check out the official program for information on all nine Change AGEnts Action Awardees.
The Spring 2015 AGEnts Action Award application cycle is now open. The deadline for applications is Monday, March 16, 2015 at 5:00 pm ET. Please visit our Action Awards page for full details.
Remember: You have to play to win. And while you won’t get the $92,000 that each player on this year’s winning Super Bowl team will take home (we know the Action Awards are not about the money), you will receive an opportunity to raise awareness, gain institutional support, forge interdisciplinary partnerships, and catalyze action—all to improve the health of older Americans.
And we would be happy to share video of your winner’s end zone dance, if you are game.