“We created TEAMS for Healthier Living to elicit and positively reinforce healthy lifestyle behaviors and mitigate the impact of chronic illness,” said Kathy Moisio, PhD, RN, “because it is difficult to change longstanding health-related behaviors in a 10- or 15-minute practitioner visit, and written pamphlets don’t always work.” TEAMS for Healthier Living brings together students and faculty from a local university and college with older adults and staff at community sites to achieve a healthier lifestyle. We visited the Mountain View Community Center in Edgewood, WA in early March 2017 to see how the SAIL Program has been integrated into the larger framework of TEAMS for Healthier Living.
The SAIL Program is the “actively living” component of TEAMS. Older adults at three different community-based sites meet several times weekly to participate in the SAIL fitness class. Beth Ann Johnson is the Community Programs Coordinator at Mountain View. Beth Ann completed a one-day, on-site SAIL Program Leader training in September 2013. “There were ten of us that started in the SAIL Program back then”, says Beth Ann. “We could only get through ten minutes of exercise, but now we can go for an hour”. Their original group of ten people has now grown to forty people!
Sarah Schofield, RN is the faculty representative from Pacific Lutheran University who supervises the student nurses at Mountain View. “Nursing students are focused on the acute care world and they get tunnel vision”, Sarah told us. “This experience breaks that down, and opens their eyes to who the patients are outside the hospital”.
We caught up with Albert Furusho, another of the nursing students. Albert was working with an older adult to record blood pressure and weight. Albert stated that he had been surprised at how enthusiastic and engaged the older adults are. “Chronic problems are from lifestyle choices, so these smaller steps that we are helping them learn will lead to larger goals”.
Amy O’Reilly was assisting an older adult in developing an Action Plan to increase fiber and protein in the diet. Amy shared that she was learning that older adults are very capable in doing for themselves, and that is one thing that she will take with her when she is talking to older adults in her future career as a nurse.
TEAMS for Healthier Living is offered through the collaborative efforts of seven organizations, and is sponsored by Multicare Health System through its Community Partnership Fund. TEAMS has been implemented on a small scale since 2013; program evaluation results to date have shown the program to be cost-effective with positive health outcomes for older adults as well as positive learning outcomes for students – a win, win by all accounts.
If you would like more information regarding TEAMS, please contact Kathy Moisio, PhD, RN at Kathy.Moisio@doh.wa.gov.