We know from study after study that most older adults would prefer to age in place, in their homes, with their families and embedded in their communities. But our health system is in many ways not particularly well set up to help people age in place. Medicare does not routinely require measurement or tracking of disability that leads many people to move out of their homes, and many interventions that support people to age in place are unfunded, underfunded, or funded by philanthropy rather than the government. Today we talk with Sarah Szanton, who created the CAPABLE multi-disciplinary model to help older adults stay at home, and Kenny Lam, who used a national study to examine the need for home-modification devices . And we preview another of the AGS songs for the literature update - this one to the tune of “My Get up and Go” by Pete Seeger. Enjoy! -@AlexSmithMD
by Sara Levin, David Farrell, Terry Hill, and Nicole Howell As with much of our pre-pandemic reality, the relationship between local health departments and long-term care facilities appears in retrospect to have been tranquil and routine. Each year, local health departments offered influenza vaccine supplies to long-term care facilities and provided support for reportable communicable disease investigations as needed. That relationship was upended with the advent in March 2020 of an expanding COVID-19 pandemic that would soon bring suffering and death to long-term care facilities. The prior supports for infection prevention and control from federal, state, and local entities were wholly inadequate to address the COVID-19 tsunami. For local health departments, rapid resource reallocation and improvisation became imperative. Outbreak investigation and support teams blossomed in every local health department; phone calls and emails were numberless in both directions. The suppo