ageWELL Community Health Worker Formative Study

NFESH_CHW Formative_7.2024 Abstract By 2030, the number of adults in the US age 65 years and older will reach 73.1 million or 21% of the population.1 We know that most older adults experience two or more chronic health conditions and report taking 3 to 5 or more prescription medications daily.2,3 Successful self- management of multiple chronic health conditions is challenging and for many complicated by financial and social needs. Efforts to support older adults to remain healthy as they age will benefit from increased attention to factors associated with the day-to-day decisions required when managing multiple chronic health conditions, such as what to eat, whether and how to exercise, and taking medications. These factors occur at a personal, family and community level. Factors may be known only to a trusted few while others are shared by those similarly aged, with a common background. Community health workers (CHWs), defined as ‘frontline public health workers who are trusted members of and/or have an unusually close understanding of the community served’ 4 may be best positioned to identify and take steps to address the multiple factors that enable or hinder successful self-management by older adults of chronic health conditions. Across the US, community dining sites that serve the federally-supported congregate meal program are located in senior centers and other neighborhood settings, providing easy access to an older adult community that is often lower income with many financial and social needs. CHW programs have been commonplace in many communities for more than twenty years.4 However, to our knowledge, CHW recruitment from the older adult community who access community dining sites is not typical and CHW engagement with meal program participants, when it occurs, is at best sporadic. Expanding services at community settings that serve the congregate meal program to include regular CHW services by CHWs recruited from this older adult community may be one way to improve chronic disease self-management among a population disproportionately burdened by multiple chronic conditions and the consequences of uncontrolled disease, including disability, reoccurring hospitalization and loss of independence. 1