This post offers a curated list of articles toolkits, white papers, and other resources that offer how adaptations for old adult populations of evidence-based practices is critical to ensure relevance and effectiveness across marginalized populations. Click on the toggle for any reference to view a brief summary of the document, its source, and an active link for access.
E4 Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health Disparities in Aging. (n.d.). Home
Overview: The website provides resources, training, technical assistance, and educational videos to healthcare providers and communities, aiming to strengthen workforce capacity to address the mental health and substance use needs of older adults and their families. It emphasizes implementing evidence-based practices and programs for vulnerable older adults who face significant behavioral and physical health disparities nationwide.
E4 Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health Disparities in Aging. (n.d.). Home. https://e4center.org/
Koehn, S., & Badger, M. (Eds.). (2015). Health care equity for ethnic minority older adults
Abstract: Immigrant older adults and some visible minorities who have aged here—to whom we refer collectively as ethnic or ethnocultural minority older adults (EMOA)—both experience health inequities in Canada. These are primarily related to difficulties with the complex process of accessing suitable services and supports. However, Canadian research on the topic is extremely fragmented and hard to find, and knowledge users charged with designing policy and programs do not have the evidence they need to help them to address access barriers experienced by EMOA. This collection of literature reviews prepared by a team of multidisciplinary academics and multisectoral knowledge users begins the process of consolidating existing evidence. It serves three purposes: (1) in areas in which the body of evidence is sufficient, it provides guidance to policy makers and frontline providers who seek to improve access by EMOA to health services and/or health promotion programs and information; (2) in domains in which there is a paucity of relevant research, or lack of consensus within the research record, it identifies future directions; and (3) it introduces the reader to the value of the Candidacy Framework for understanding facilitators and barriers to access, particularly for underserved populations.
Koehn, S., & Badger, M. (Eds.). (2015). Health care equity for ethnic minority older adults. Vancouver, BC: Gerontology Research Centre, Simon Fraser University. https://summit.sfu.ca/item/15148
Morgan, E., De Lima, B., Pleet, A., & Eckstrom, E. (2022). Health equity in an age-friendly health system: identifying potential care gaps
Abstract – Background: The Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) initiative uses a 4Ms framework-What Matters, Mentation, Medication, and Mobility-to encourage patient-centered care for older adults. Many health systems have implemented the core elements of AFHS with the goal to uniformly apply them to all patients 65 years and older. However, equity in AFHS delivery has not yet been examined. Methods: Five health equity factors-gender, race, ethnicity, preferred language, and electronic patient portal (MyChart) activation-were cross-sectionally analyzed against the 4Ms framework for patients in an academic internal medicine clinic seen between April 2020 and April 2021 (N = 3 370). Bivariate analysis and multiple logistic regression models analyzed the relationship of health equity variables to the 4Ms metrics and were represented with odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals. Results: Preferred language, gender, and MyChart activation yielded significant 4M metric pairings. Females were 1.22 times more likely than males, and English-speaking patients were 2.27 times more likely than non-English-speaking patients to receive advance care planning (p < .01). Females and patients with MyChart activation were about 2 times more likely to have a high-risk medication on their medication list compared to males and patients without MyChart activation (p < .01). Patients with MyChart activation were 2.08 times more likely than patients without MyChart activation to get cognitive screening (p < .001). Conclusion: This study, the first to incorporate demographic data into AFHS outcomes, suggests a need to develop best practices for equitable Age-Friendly care at the clinical team and institutional policy levels.
Morgan, E., De Lima, B., Pleet, A., & Eckstrom, E. (2022). Health equity in an age-friendly health system: identifying potential care gaps. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, 77(11), 2306-2310. https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/77/11/2306/6546623 or https://doi.org/101093/gerona/glac060