U of A nursing faculty joins gerontological excellence body

The University of Alberta faculty of nursing has joined the National Hartford Centers of Gerontological Nursing Excellence (NHCGNE), the first school outside the U.S. to do so.

The organization’s mission is to enhance and sustain the capacity and competency of nurses to provide quality care to older adults through faculty development, advancing gerontological nursing science, facilitating adoption of best practices, fostering leadership, and designing and shaping policy.

To be invited to join, schools of nursing must have demonstrated a commitment to gerontological nursing and share a vision of optimal health and quality of life for older adults.

“It is exciting that our expertise has been acknowledged internationally by the NHCGNE,” said Dr. Anita Molzahn, dean of the nursing faculty. “As one of the leading research-intensive nursing faculties in Canada, we have a strong cohort of researchers interested in aging and gerontological nursing.

“With 25 per cent of our faculty members -- many of whom are leading scholars -- focusing their research and scholarship primarily on care of older adults, this partnership will facilitate future research activity and faculty development relating to gerontological nursing.”

The main goals of the National Hartford Centers of Gerontological Excellence are to increase the cadre of academic geriatric nurses, build leadership capacity in academic geriatric nurses, and build national collaboration and excitement about geriatric/gerontological nursing.

Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the organization was started in 2000 with support from the John A. Hartford Foundation, and subsequently attracted additional funding partners in the Atlantic Philanthropies and Mayday Fund.

These institutions have invested over $80 million in national efforts to build academic gerontological nursing capacity through their support. The program has supported more than 200 pre-doctoral and postdoctoral nursing scholars who have stimulated excitement about the field among nursing students and practicing nurses. They are the leaders who will shape future care for older persons.

The John A. Hartford Foundation is a private philanthropy working to improve the health of older people established by in 1929. John A. Hartford and his brother, George L. Hartford, both former chief executives of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (the A&P grocery chain), left the bulk of their estates to the foundation when they died in the 1950s.

Today the foundation seeks to put geriatrics expertise to work in all health care settings by advancing practice change and innovation, supporting team-based care through interdisciplinary education of all health care providers, supporting policies and regulations that promote better care, and developing and disseminating new evidence-based models that deliver better, more cost-effective health care.

Effort needed to improve Aboriginal seniors health: report

Governments must make a greater effort to collaborate to improve health care for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis seniors, according to a new report by the Health Council of Canada.

The report, Canada’s most vulnerable: Improving health care for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis seniors, concludes they often do not receive the same level of health care as non-Aboriginal Canadians because of poor communication, collaboration, and disputes between governments about who is responsible for the care of Aboriginal people.

“Aboriginal seniors have more complex health needs than other Canadian seniors, but they often don’t receive the same level of care,” said Dr. Catherine Cook, a councillor with the Health Council of Canada who is Métis. 

According to 2011 Statistics Canada, there were 82,690 Aboriginal people in Canada aged 65 and over, accounting for 5.9 per cent of the total Aboriginal population. This compares to the 14.2 per cent of seniors in the non-Aboriginal population.

In 2011 in Alberta, there were 220,695 Aboriginal people, representing 15.8 per cent of the total Aboriginal population of Canada. About four per cent are aged 65 and over.

In comparison to the larger Canadian population, a significantly higher proportion of Aboriginal seniors live on low incomes and in poor health, with multiple chronic conditions and disabilities, the report points out.

Many are in poorer physical and mental health due to the disruption to their way of life caused by colonization, particularly the intergenerational impacts and trauma of the residential school experience.

These health needs are magnified by poverty, poor housing, racism, language barriers, and cultural differences.

Despite this, little attention has been paid to date to the health care needs of Aboriginal seniors in either research or public policy, the report states.

Home care for First Nations seniors on reserve is one example it discusses.

“In some provinces, there can be quite a discrepancy between the level of care available to First Nations seniors on reserve, and what is available to seniors in the rest of the province,” said Cook. “At the same time, some provinces have inadvertently caused more pressure for on-reserve home care programs by creating policies that send people home earlier from the hospital.”

 The Health Council’s report looks at developments from across Canada in which governments, health regions, and Aboriginal communities have formed partnerships to improve health care for Aboriginal seniors and other Aboriginal people.

“The ground-breaking transfer of health authority to the new First Nations Health Authority in BC is the highest profile example of this type of partnership,” says John G. Abbott, CEO of the Health Council of Canada. “We heard about many emerging partnerships at a local or regional level, where people were surveying Aboriginal seniors to find out their needs, and working together to make improvements,” added Abbott.

The purpose of this report, he noted, is to give governments, regional health authorities, and health care providers a better understanding of the problems faced by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis seniors, and to provide them with examples of how they can do things differently.

The report is at www. healthcouncilcanada.ca/improvinghealthcare.