EOA 2017-18: Leveraging Health Literacy and Community Health Resources to Improve Senior Care

The overall goal of the proposed project is to strengthen and enhance access to local and national health information resources for the Washoe County, NV, community of seniors and senior caregivers, and to improve the capacity of regional caregivers to incorporate health information resources and health literacy best practices into patient care discharge planning and care management. The locus for outreach to both lay caregivers and the professional healthcare community is a website built collaboratively with the Community Foundation of Western Nevada and funded in part through a grant-funded project, ?Community Health Information Resource for Seniors (CHIRS),? which is currently in beta testing. Funding will build on the CHIRS website work by engaging with healthcare providers who deliver discharge planning and care management services as well as caregivers and the lay community of seniors. As with the groundwork for this project, the focus will be on access to local services and online information resources; the hope is to improve the capacity of older adults to locate and integrate information that fosters a healthier and more self-reliant lifestyle.