Improving the health literacy skills of Georgia’s elderly and disabled is the goal of a UGA research project that has recently been funded by federal stimulus monies.
Researchers Vicki Freimuth and Don Rubin received $970,039 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for a two-year project that uses volunteers to help vulnerable elderly people improve their interactions with health care providers.
Freimuth serves a joint appointment in UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and department of speech communication. She also serves as director of UGA’s Center for Health and Risk Communication. Rubin is professor emeritus of speech communication and a Center for Health and Risk Communication researcher.
The research project will train Meals on Wheels volunteers to become health literacy coaches for older adults. Meals on Wheels volunteers regularly bring food to the elderly and disabled, who otherwise cannot provide food for themselves.
The project will be conducted in the urban counties of DeKalb, Fulton and Cobb and in several rural counties in southwest Georgia.
“Older adults often are less likely to express their needs to doctors,” said Freimuth. “They are more passive patients.”
This passivity makes them less likely to ask questions when they don’t understand heath care professionals, which can impede treatment.
Freimuth and Rubin’s research will focus on oral communication between health care professionals and older adults. Many of the older adults receiving Meals on Wheels services are socially isolated, and their interaction with the volunteer is one of their few chances during the day for interaction.
“There is a lot of research on the elderly’s ability to read and understand written materials given by healthcare professionals,” said Freimuth. “There is much less information on how the elderly take in oral information, which is one of the main ways they receive information from health care professionals.”
Graduate students Mumbi Okundaye, a master’s student in public health, and John Parmer, a doctoral student in health promotion, will provide additional assistance on the project along with program manager, Terry Kaley.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is funding research projects in all 50 states. The bulk of the funding is being provided by the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.