Mental Healthiness Aging Initiative (MHAI)

Mental Healthiness Aging Initiative (MHAI) is an educational intervention program designed to increase community knowledge about normal and pathological mental health aging and access to mental health resources, with the intention to decrease health disparities of rural elders (65+ years). This is a collaborative effort among University of Kentucky academic health colleges, Cooperative Extension, and Health Education through Extension Leadership (HEEL). This intervention will be modeled after a successful Alzheimer's disease intervention, within the same targeted 20 rural counties (Extension-District 1). The underlying theoretical principles of diffusion of innovation will guide MHAI, expanding beyond Alzheimer's, MHAI focuses on broad mental health pertaining to the aging population; an area of need as expressed by targeted community members. Information from focus groups will direct the educational intervention and social marketing campaign: "Aging: What is Normal? (WIN)". Teams consisting of academic and service experts (WIN Team) and HEEL staff and Family Consumer Science Extension Agents (Implementation Team) will guide and carry-out focus groups and interventions in 10 self-selected counties, and a social marketing campaign in all 20 counties. The WIN Team will ensure that MHAI activities are congruent with current scientific knowledge. The implementation team will bridge communications between experts and the community, and implement the intervention. Evaluation measures will compare the impact of the social marketing campaign alone, to the exposure of both an educational intervention and social marketing campaign. MHAI program outcomes will be communicated to ensure both a local and a wide dissemination and to support a later state-wide implementation.