Prevent Disease
Studies show that preventive measures such as increasing physical activity, improving nutrition and conducting health screenings go a long way toward managing chronic conditions and reducing associated disabilities as people age. As such, many of these initiatives emphasize chronic disease self-management and health behavior change.
Chronic Disease Program
The Chronic Disease Program is a multi-disciplinary approach to serving both ADS long-term care clients and chronically-ill Medicaid patients in King County through tailored in-home or community interventions for services such as physical therapy, nutritional counseling, medication management, and problem solving therapy for minor depression.
PEARLS (depression management)
The Program to Encourage Active, Rewarding Lives for Seniors (PEARLS) is a community-integrated program to treat older adults with disabilities who also have minor depression. PEARLS is available to ADS funded case management clients in King County.
The PEARLS program is an outgrowth of a 5 year research project conducted in collaboration with the University of Washington's Health Promotion Research Center (HPRC). The research study showed PEARLS home-based depression management counseling significantly reduced depression symptoms and improved health status in chronically medically ill older adults with minor depression.
Resources:
- Project Summary A brief summary of program design and results.
- "Community-Integrated Home-Based Depression Treatment in Older Adults" Research article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), April 2004.
- PEARLS Implementation Toolkit
The how-to manual for implementing PEARLS in your agency. - "PEARLS Gives Seniors with Mild Depression New Hope" One in a series of stories by the Centers for Disease Control on successful prevention research programs, January 2007.
- UW Health Promotion Research Center PEARLS Website
Enhance Wellness
Enhance Wellness is a motivational intervention that encourages older adults to take on health challenges and maintain control of their lives. Formerly known as the Health Enhancement Program, Enhance Wellness is a community based health promotion effort of Project Enhance
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