Strategies for promoting health and managing disease

¶ … poor elderly are a vulnerable population in all communities. Specific factors that have contributed to this factor constitute ageism, namely the way that elderly are generally stereotypes as deserving of less social respect and undeserving of social support. In American society in particular, and in western society in general, youth is glorified and monetary success considered, whether erroneously or not, to equivocate happiness. The fact is that an elderly person who is wealthy might well receive the best of treatment. It is the combination of age and poverty with poverty dominating that spells rejection and, sometimes, premature death, deprivation, and suffering.

A great source of resources for the elderly in my community are social support networks such as The Ark that even though promoted as Jewish, is actually available for all individuals regardless of race. Not only does it regularly deliver food packages to needy elderly people. Its medical clinic, staffed by volunteer physicians, is open five days a week, whilst x-rays and other tests and procedures are offered at area hospital at no charge to the client. As per originality, however, I could think of no related program more original and useful than that that I recently encountered in the news: Florida's clinic on wheels.

Florida has huge swaths of elderly citizens whom, living in remote and desolate areas, are often ignored and overlooked. Using a converted bus, the Project CARE Mobile Medical Clinic -- a free clinic -- regularly travels to Florida's low-income senior citizens who are unable o, or inhibited to seeking medical help and it provides it to them free of charge. Florida has only one other such service and of 3,2200 senior citizens 70% are deterred from seeing a doctor due to the high costs of transportation (aside from no affording one). Run by a huge network of volunteers, the mobile van is able to treat several hundreds of individuals per month.

I love the idea and I know quite a few retired doctors in my community who with volunteer nurses and other caregivers could form themselves into a similar body. With a well-structure program, wide and well-organized marketing, and a free bus, the set-up mostly run on donations should be relatively inexpensive to establish. Success of the program primarily hinges on management and organization.

Even though the Project CARE Mobile Medical Clinic is slanted to an elderly population, it could easily be expanded to anyone who lives far and could also be appropriate to immigrants who do not understand English. For instance research shows that immigrants of the U.S.A. have worse access to care than non-immigrants of that same country due to their isolation and to their difficulty with the native language (Chesney, 2004). Hispanics, per example, are more likely to receive sub-standard care and to experience poorer outcomes from treatment, with fewer follow-up visits and earlier discontinuation due to their language differences, particularly incomprehension of language nuances relating to health factors, and a consequent fear of dealing with any situation that involves the language on a level that is incomprehensible to them thus causing them to avoid help when they most need it. Differences in cultural idioms used to express comfort or discomfort also play a part as well as somatic presentation (Sandy & Elliott, 1996).