Work Group: Senior Services

In September, after publishing and broadly disseminating a community guide to facilitate conversations around advance care planning, members of the WHI’s Advance Care Planning group mutually agreed to sunset their efforts the following March. 

In April, the Vital Seniors Initiative launched⁠—thanks to funding from the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. The project surfaced 43 innovative ideas from local organizations about how to positively impact vulnerable older adults and their caregivers in Washtenaw County, including creating accessible resources and options that allow seniors to stay in their homes as long as they are … Read more

At the October 10th Steering Committee meeting, the Advance Care Planning group shared that after conducting focus groups and beginning to write a conversation guide for Advance Care Planning (ACP) titled, “Making Your Health Care Wishes Known,” the group decided to refresh its charge and project goals. These changes included: updating the advance care planning … Read more

On November 17th at the State Theater in downtown Ann Arbor, the Washtenaw Health Initiative hosted a showing of “Consider the Conversation 2: Stories about Cure, Relief, and Comfort.” The film explores the American struggle with communication and preparation for end-of-life, particularly for those living with severe chronic illnesses. Following the film, a panel of … Read more

In September, the Advance Care Planning group published conversation guide, titled “Making Your Health Care Wishes Known,”  to help community members and providers begin ACP conversations. Earlier in August, the group published an issue brief, Advance Care Planning: Tying a Community Perspective to the National Conversation, and a Health Affairs blog, Using Community Input To … Read more

On November 24th, Michigan Radio reported New program seeks to encourage more of us to talk with our doctors about end-of-life care which included an interview with Marianne Udow-Phillips, executive director of the Center for Health and Research Transformation, the WHI’s backbone organization. “Part of what we’re trying to emphasize is this isn’t actually just … Read more

In September, the Senior Services workgroup completed its Senior Services Project Assessment. The assessment determined that Washtenaw County is rich in resources for senior citizens; however, many of the organizations included in the assessment had challenges raising awareness of their publicly available resources. 

In June, the WHI Hospice Care workgroup published an End-of-life and Palliative Care Assessment in Washtenaw County—an environmental assessment that highlighted health care coverage and utilization by seniors. Later, in a meeting on November 3, the first steps for an Advanced Care Plan project were discussed. The overarching goal of the ACP was to help … Read more

In October, the WHI released its Medicare Hospice Market Share Data Executive Summary. The summary helped the WHI recognize an opportunity to improve advance care planning (ACP) in Washtenaw County.