Explore insightful works from our partners, showcasing their research and expertise. These resources offer valuable perspectives on advancing healthcare, education, and support for Georgia's aging community.
American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM),
The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) is the professional organization for physicians specializing in hospice and palliative medicine, nurses, and other healthcare providers. Since 1988, the Academy has dedicated itself to advancing hospice and palliative medicine and improving the care of patients with serious illness. AAHPM’s activities focus on education and training, resources, networking, and advocacy. AAHPM and Georgia Gear are working to partner with community organizations to support under-represented in medicine (URiM) health professions learners. Emory University faculty member Kimberly Curseen, MD, leads a year-long program of targeted mentorship, the Next Generation Scholars Program, which engages under-represented in medicine (URiM) junior faculty who are matched to senior leaders in the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. By incorporating inclusive teaching practices, culturally relevant curricula, and diverse perspectives, educators can create an environment that supports a wide range of trainees and decreases barriers to success.
Annual Wellness Visits,
Georgia Gear partner Sarah Dupont, MD, MPH, led Emory Healthcare in a complete redesign of the Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) visit electronic medical record visit documentation template, with a focus on ensuring an enhanced personalized prevention plan is generated during each visit. She has presented this work at statewide conferences. We will continue this work through enhancing the use of telemedicine tools to provide AWV services for rural seniors through partnership with local departments of health. In 2021, Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in each Georgia county receiving an AWV ranged from 13% to 57%. Increasing primary care provider (PCP) knowledge and understanding of the importance of services provided through the AWV will lead to improved care for Georgia’s elderly.
Area Health Education Centers (AHEC),
The National Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) Organization represents a network of more than 300 AHEC program offices and centers that serve over 85% of United States counties. The AHEC mission is to enhance access to quality health care, particularly primary and preventive care, by improving the supply and distribution of healthcare professionals via strategic partnerships with academic programs, communities, and professional organizations. AHECs are committed to expanding the health care workforce, while maximizing diversity and facilitating distribution, especially in rural and underserved communities. AHECs offer creative, hands-on, and innovative health career curriculums for pre-college level students. The Georgia Statewide AHEC is a partnership coordinated by Augusta University which includes six sites statewide and is led by Denise Kornegay. This comprehensive, multi-disciplinary initiative aims to respond to the challenges of health professional supply and distribution in rural and underserved areas of the state. AHEC is partnering with Georgia Gear to provide housing for trainees rotating in rural areas.
Atlanta Medical Association,
The Atlanta Medical Association (ATLMed) was founded in 1890 to help Black healthcare professionals practice medicine in an oppressive environment and continues to support them and address their unique challenges in the present . The Atlanta Medical Association is the local affiliate of both the Georgia State Medical Association and the National Medical Association. ATLMed programs and initiatives focus on four key areas: education, service, advocacy, and social networking. The mission of ATLMed is to make healthcare universally accessible and achievable for all through community service, mentorship, and education. ATLMed is partnering with Georgia Gear to enhance the understanding of age-friendly and dementia-friendly care for Georgia’s primary care workforce.
BOLD/B-SEEN,
BOLD and B-SEEN are federally funded programs designed to enhance the US public health infrastructure around Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRD). In 2020 the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) was awarded a three-year grant to implement the Building Our Largest Dementia Infrastructure (BOLD) using Systematic Education, Evidence, and Networks (B-SEEN) project. Project teams engage in systemic population-based efforts to increase impact in the areas of dementia risk reduction, early diagnosis of ADRD , prevention and management of comorbidities and avoidable hospitalizations, and caregiving for persons with dementia. Georgia DPH’s B-SEEN project implements evidence-based strategies and activities that address dementia and support the promotion of brain health among populations with a high burden of ADRD—specifically African Americans, Hispanics, and individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and those living in high burden rural areas. The collaboration between Georgia Gear, Georgia Memory Net (GMN), and Georgia DPH’s BOLD and B-SEEN programs will enable outreach to rural primary care providers, enhancing their age-friendly and dementia-friendly clinical care through continuing medical education, credit-providing training, and both in-person and Zoom-based sessions. This partnership will facilitate the placement of Emory medical learners (geriatric fellows; preventive medicine, family medicine (FM), and internal medicine (IM) residents; and UME students) into rural practice settings.
Dad’s Garage (Improv Training),
Founded in 1995, Dad's Garage is an award-winning non-profit theatre company that brings in over 30,000 people a year at our Ezzard Street home in Atlanta's historic Old Fourth Ward, public events across the continent, and festivals around the globe. Each season features original plays and world premieres created by our artistic family. While just about everyone in the artistic group at Dad's is an improv comic, the artists also write, direct, design, and perform in our scripted shows and write, perform, direct, and edit pieces for DGTV, our YouTube channel. We support the creation of new and experimental works that travel around the country and transform the careers of their creators. Dad's Garage is a key partner in demonstrating and training in improvisation techniques, which includes training in "Yes, and …", mirroring, and storytelling. These skills can be used by paid and informal caregivers to help them be more present in the moment and thus improve communication skills when supporting persons living with dementia. Dad's Garage offers small workshops for 5-25 people and can accommodate large group events from 26-300 people.
engage,
Engage in Age (engage) is an interdisciplinary initiative housed at Mercer College of Health Professions. Engage will continue its collaboration with Georgia Gear to develop and implement educational resources on age-friendly and dementia-friendly care for health professional students and practitioners to address and mitigate ageism through creating shared vocabulary and using a humanities approach. The engage program is built on the premise that in order for clinicians to practice and participate in the delivery of age-friendly care, they must be trained in an age-friendly manner. Through this project, engage will develop students who are better prepared to provide value-based care and enhance collaboration between primary care physicians and other healthcare providers to integrate the 4Ms (What Matters, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility) into each patient encounter to optimize health outcomes for Georgia’s older adults. In partnership with Georgia Gear, engage will work to transform primary care sites and delivery systems to offer age-friendly and dementia-friendly care for older adults. Additionally, engage will equip faculty and preceptors with the knowledge and skills needed to train the healthcare workforce in providing age-friendly and dementia-friendly care to older adults.
Georgia Cherokee Community Alliance,
The Georgia Cherokee Community Alliance (GCCA) is a community of federally recognized Cherokees dedicated to Cherokee culture, tradition, heritage, and fellowship. GCCA is a non-political, non-profit, Native American organization incorporated as a 501-C-3 whose members reside outside the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation and Bands. GCCA gathers to meet the needs of their community and to help in assisting their elders, veterans, and youth or other needs as deemed necessary by the GCCA. The GCCA is a satellite community of the Cherokee Nation and acts as the official point of connection between the Cherokee Nation and its Georgia Cherokee citizens. Georgia Gear’s partnership with the GCCA will focus on providing the supportive care workforce for GA Tribal populations with resources to improve the care of tribal older adults. Specifically, we will offer community health fairs and health education activities to members of the GCCA, focusing on those living in under-resourced and rural areas, to enhance their connection to age-friendly and dementia-friendly health services. We will also support GCCA’s website enhancement to facilitate greater connection between Tribal populations and healthcare services.
Georgia Memory Net,
Georgia Memory Net (GMN) is a statewide, state-funded initiative passed by the Georgia Assembly in 2017 as part of the Department of Human Services continuing budget to support the Georgia Alzheimer's and Related Dementias State Plan. GMN seeks to increase awareness of and screening for cognitive impairment among primary care providers, develop and maintain a network of Memory Assessment Clinics (MACs) statewide to expand access to diagnostic services and enhance linkages to community services and supports, and develop and deploy a robust IT infrastructure for comprehensive program impact evaluation. Many 2010-2015 Atlanta Regional Geriatric Education Center (ARGEC) leaders serve in key roles in the development and ongoing management of the GMN. Rebecca Dillard, ARGEC Lead for Program Evaluation, is the GMN Project Director, Ted Johnson serves as Senior Faculty Advisory for GMN's Primary Care Training Core, and Ken Hepburn serves as Lead and Senior Faculty Advisor for the GMN Community Services Education Core. While this $4.12M annual investment is groundbreaking, state-provided Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) funding does not address broader aging-related social and health needs in GA for older adults who do not have dementia. Yet, GMN offers a valuable architecture for GA-GWEP success, including access to public messaging, evaluation resources, outreach campaigns, community connections, and academic and public health connectivity. The GMN has partnered with Georgia Gear and the Georgia DPH’s BOLD and B-SEEN programs to enable outreach to rural primary care providers to increase their age-friendly and dementia-friendly clinical care through continuing medical education (CME) credit-providing, in-person and Zoom-based trainings. The GMN has established two standing, statewide video-teleconference training series that supplement two yearly, statewide in-person conferences. We will modify the current GMNsights (Georgia Memory Net Insights) offerings to allow practicing geriatric and PCPs to customize a learning plan specific to their patient population needs.
Georgia State University Gerontology Institute,
The Gerontology Institute of Georgia State University and Georgia Gear are partnering with Georgia nursing homes to collaboratively identify and implement a state registered apprenticeship program for the purpose of providing certified nursing assistants meaningful career advancement within their discipline. Specifically, we will pilot test a registered apprenticeship program in partnership with at least one nursing home and assess the feasibility and sustainability of the apprenticeship model in Georgia nursing homes. The GSU Byrdine F. Lewis College of Nursing and Health Professions is located on Georgia State University’s campus in Atlanta. The School of Nursing offers Ph.D. and DNP programs and currently has 277 undergraduate nursing students and approximately 316 master's students in several specialty nursing areas. Lewis College has graduated more than 5,000 nurses, NPs, educators, and researchers to serve in GA and beyond. Their mission: to prepare the next generation of clinicians and scholars who collectively enhance individual and community health in a culturally diverse society. Their strategic priority around collaboration is to strengthen relationships with local health partners from community-based partners to tertiary care centers. Georgia State University's Gerontology Institute is a university-wide unit responsible for the development and coordination of instruction, research, and community service activities in gerontology. Building on 50 years of gerontological education, the Institute is among the oldest and most accomplished gerontology programs in the Southeast offering undergraduate and graduate degrees and certificates. Faculty are research active, receiving funding from federal and private funders, including the National Institutes of Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Hitachi Foundation. Faculty, staff, and students are committed to the Institute's tagline, "Leading the way in an aging society," and are dedicated to improving quality of life and making a difference in the lives of older adults and those who support them. The Gerontology Institute is engaged in the Georgia Gear partnership with Dad's Garage, the improvisational theatre company. Together, we are developing and advancing research and programs focused on improv training for care partners of persons living with dementia, including family and friends, health care professionals, and direct care workers. The goal is to improve dementia care experiences through the application of improv techniques.