Tag Archives: Aging

Second Annual CHAMP Conference on Health and Aging Abstract Deadline Coming Feb. 17th

by Sang E. Lee, PhD

Dear Faculty at CSU Chico, CSU East Bay, CSU Fresno, CSU Monterey Bay, CSU Sacramento, CSU Sonoma, San Francisco State University, and San Jose State University,

On behalf of the organizing committee, I cordially invite you to submit an abstract to the Second Annual CHAMP Conference on Health and Aging. This refereed conference will take place on Friday, April 5th, 2013, 9:45am – 3pm at San Jose State University. Registration is free.

CHAMP (www.sjsu.edu/champ) is housed at San JoséState University.  Our inaugural conference last year was a part of our effort to foster collaboration in aging research and education across CSU campuses in the Bay Area. Faculty and student presentations were well received by over 100 attendees including students, faculty and community partners from the Bay Area. This year we are expanding the conference to include additional CSU campuses.

 We encourage your submission focused on health and aging in multicultural/diverse contexts – e.g., empirical papers, conceptual/theoretical papers, model curriculum/program, and innovative pedagogy including using online technology. There are two presentation formats:  1) Oral presentation (15 minutes); 2) a 30-minute symposium/panel on a topic related to the theme of the conference.

This invitation is also extended to CSU undergraduate and graduate students. Students can submit abstracts of their research on health and aging in multicultural/diverse contexts for a poster presentation. There will be a designated time slot for the student poster sessions during the conference.

Abstracts are welcome from the following disciplines (but not limited to): communication disorders, gerontology, health science, justice studies, kinesiology, nursing, nutrition, occupational therapy, psychology, social work, and sociology.

 The deadline for submission of abstracts is February 17, 2013. Your abstract will be peer-reviewed by the Conference Program Committee and a decision letter will be sent out at the end of February, 2013. Instructions for abstract submissions are below.

Please share this invitation with your colleagues and students and save the date for the conference, April 5th, 2013, 9:45am – 3pm.

How to Prepare Social Workers to Address Older Adults’ Mental Health

By: Sadhna Diwan, Ph.D., Director of the Center on Healthy Aging in Multicultural Populations (CHAMP)

(This blog originally appeared with the John A. Hartford Foundation)

When I was in graduate school (a very long time ago!), I recall taking a number of courses in the mental health specialization in the MSW program. There was almost no aging-related content in any of the courses except for a lecture on “Organic Brain Syndrome.” The limits of the mental health curriculum became painfully apparent when I got my first job at a community mental health center. I saw several older clients, some with a diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia, some with serious chronic diseases like COPD, some of whom were depressed, some who drank alcohol, and some who had started to have difficulties with performing their activities of daily living. I embarked on a very steep and long learning curve as I slowly began to learn more about aging, mental health, and the service systems that operated in their own silos. The “aging services” system was separate from the mental health system and neither was well equipped to address the mental health needs of older persons. Fast forward to the present and we find that the majority of social work schools still have very limited course content on understanding and addressing the interplay of health and mental issues among older people and unsurprisingly, the service systems have not changed very much either.

Thankfully, both the John A. Hartford Foundation and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently released reports highlighting the critical need for practitioners in geriatric mental health services. Both reports describe the need for increasing the number of care providers who are properly trained in diagnosing and treating mental health issues among older clients. While educators and service providers may operate in their own silos (health care, mental health care, aging services), our older clients or patients do not. They bring with them a tangled web of issues that impact myriad aspects of their daily lives.

I feel fortunate to have had the chance to make a difference in improving geriatric mental health training as the PI of the Gero-Ed Center’s Master’s Advanced Curriculum (MAC) Project. The MAC Project brought together a diverse group of social work faculty with expertise in mental health, health, and substance use who developed outstanding educational materials that are being used to train current and future social workers on geriatric mental health issues. One teaching resource that would have been helpful for my own clinical work many years ago is a series of videos, case studies, and evidence-supported lecture notes addressing differential mental health assessments (depression, cognition, substance use) for a diverse group of seniors presenting with chronic illnesses (COPD, diabetes, ischemic strokes).

Given the demographic shifts, the changing practice needs, and the development of accessible and high-quality teaching resources, there really is no good reason why students today should graduate without knowing much about aging. Social work faculty who use these teaching resources have noted how easy they are to use. In my own courses, students rave about the excellent quality of the learning gained through these resources, and I get the benefit of great teaching evaluations! We invite you to join us and do your part in addressing the critical gap in training future professionals in geriatric mental health. Please visit the MAC Project website and select a few of the excellent resources to include in your courses. Many older adults and their families will be thankful that you did!