April 2021 - Revising In-Person Evidence-Based Programming Considerations

Kathleen Zuke was privileged to grow up with eight loving grandparents and developed a passion for supportive services for older adults as a caregiver for her grandfather. She has been a Senior Program Manager with the Center for Healthy Aging since 2015. In this role, she works collaboratively with community-based partners across the country to identify, implement, and sustain evidence-based programs that support older adults in staying well and aging in the community, including chronic disease self-management education, falls prevention, and behavioral health. She has a Master’s degree in Public Health from Hunter College and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

The important role evidence-based programs have been highlighted during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The current public health challenge has highlighted the needs of the medically vulnerable – including the older adult population – in addition to underscoring the necessity of adapting programs for remote delivery settings. In this session, we will leverage data from ACL grantees – as collected by the National Council on Aging – to glean insights about the transition process to remote delivery. We will also compare-and-contrast the pre-pandemic in-person delivery of evidence-based falls-prevention and Chronic Disease Self-Management Education programs and the predominantly remote delivery of these interventions amid COVID-19. We will highlight findings on data related to program implementation, such as number of workshops, average class size, ad completion rate, compare participant demographics of those who participate in-person and remote workshops , and share trends in program outcome measures. Additionally, we discuss the best practices and lessons-learned from ACL grantees as they transitioned to remote-intervention delivery and how these learnings may sustain after the pandemic.