INQRI Team Recognized for Work on "Aging in Place"

Congratulations to our team at the University of Maryland, led by Barbara Resnick and Sheryl Zimmerman.  Their project on Function-Focused Care recently won a Dorland Health Silver Crown Award in the Aging in Place category.

Dorland Health, a division of Access Intelligence, created the awards program to honor excellence and dedication among industry-leading organizations who provide exceptional services, products, and information to the over 55 community, and also recognizes individual healthcare professionals who achieve great success working with the senior population.

The Resnick-Zimmerman team conducted a randomized controlled trial to test Function Focused Care – Assisted Living (FFC-AL), an intervention designed to maintain and improve function, physical activity, muscle strength, psychosocial outcomes (efficacy expectations and life satisfaction) and decrease adverse events (pain, falls and hospitalizations) among assisted living residents. A total of 171 residents and 96 direct care workers (DCW) were followed for 12 months. Based on observations of care interactions, DCWs in treatment sites provided more function focused care by 12 months than those in the control sites. Residents in treatment sites demonstrated fewer declines in function and spent more time in moderate level physical activity at 4 months and more overall counts of activity at 12 months when compared to residents in control sites. There were fewer transfers to the hospital among those in the treatment sites. There was evidence of dissemination and implementation of FFC-AL within the sites that endured beyond the study period, showing that the team's work led to institutional policy and environmental changes. The study findings suggest that using a FFC-AL approach may help to prevent some of the persistent functional decline commonly noted in these communities, increase time spent in physical activity, and decrease the need for acute care transfers.

Click here to learn more about the Dorland Health Silver Crown Awards.