As America ages, greater numbers of older adults will be living with Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia, leading to increased incidence of wandering. Currently there are several initiatives to assist older adults who go missing. We describe and critically examine three prominent and widespread programs: Safe Return, Project Lifesaver, and…

Purpose of the Study: Lay health educators (LHEs) offer great promise for facilitating the translation of evidence-based health promotion programs to underserved areas; yet, there is little guidance on how to train LHEs to implement these programs, particularly in the crucial area of empirically validated obesity interventions. Design and Methods:…

Purpose of the study: An emerging strategy for increasing public participation in health research is volunteer registries. Using a community-based participatory research framework, we describe recruitment processes and outcomes in building a research volunteer registry of older urban African Americans. The specific research question examined…

Purpose: Stigma and lack of access to providers create barriers to mental health treatment for older adults living in the community. In order to address these barriers, we developed and evaluated a peer support intervention for older adults receiving Medicaid services. Design and Methods: Reclaiming Joy is a mental health intervention that pairs…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe how the prevalence of nurse aide training and competency evaluation programs (NATCEPs) provided in the nursing home (NH) setting changed between 1997 and 2007, to explore the environmental factors that may be influencing the prevalence of these programs, and to examine how the changing prevalence…

Purpose: This article describes a distance learning model designed to help nursing homes implement incontinence management best practices. A basic premise is that translating research into practice requires both a feasible intervention and a dissemination strategy responsive to the target audience's needs. Design and Methods: Over 8 months, nurse…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of a 12-month restorative care (Res-Care) intervention on the beliefs related to Res-Care, knowledge of Res-Care, observed performance of Res-Care with residents, and job satisfaction among nursing assistants (NAs) in nursing home (NH) settings. Design and Methods: This was a…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine scale dimensionality, reliability, invariance, targeting, continuity, cutoff scores, and diagnostic use of the Geriatric Depression Scale-Short Form (GDS-SF) over time with a sample of 177 English-speaking U.S. elders. Design and Methods: An item response theory, Rasch analysis, was conducted with…

Purpose: We examined the feasibility of creating a generic training curriculum for volunteers in health promotion programs for older adults by identifying common core content topics across 10 national programs. We also considered additional material that could augment common core content topics. Design and Methods: We reviewed in detail program…

Purpose: The objectives of this study were to develop measures of end-of-life (EOL) care processes in nursing homes and to validate the instrument for measuring them. Design and Methods: A survey of directors of nursing was conducted in 608 eligible nursing homes in New York State. Responses were obtained from 313 (51.5% response rate) facilities.…

Purpose: This study assessed the effectiveness of Active Start, a community-based behavior change and fitness program, designed to promote physical activity among sedentary community-dwelling older adults. Design and Methods: A quasi-experimental design was used. Data were analyzed using a within-group pretest-post-test design to calculate changes…

Purpose: The Gentle Persuasive Approaches (GPA) curriculum was developed as an adjunct to other educational initiatives that were part of Ontario, Canada's Alzheimer Strategy. GPA emphasizes that an individual's unique personal history has a direct application to the interpretation of and response to their behavior. It incorporates strategies into…

Purpose: A national quality report card for nursing homes, Nursing Home Compare, has been published since 2002. It has been shown to have some, albeit limited, positive impact on quality of care. The objective of this study was to test empirically the hypothesis that nursing homes have responded to the publication of the report by adopting cream…

Surveyed 24 key informants concerning new geriatric program. Found inservice education program and hospital-based community resource directory were received positively and implemented quickly. Community physicians hesitated to make referrals to geriatric assessment team, citing fear that team would steal patients and threats to physicians'…

Describes 10-year-old Victoria, Australia granny flat program which has about 3,000 units in place. Sees granny flats, designed as standardized units using panels, as offering privacy yet proximity to family. Reviews Victoria program; suggests that state initiatives are more successful than local ones, and that decentralized administration is…