Local News in Brief : Home Care Study Aims at Seniors
Several hundred elderly Santa Monica residents will receive physical exams and other health care at home under a pilot program conducted by the Santa Monica Senior Health and Peer Counseling Center and UCLA’s Multicampus Division of Geriatric Medicine.
Under a $657,143 grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Mich., to study the effects of in-home preventive health care on the elderly, researchers are contacting 2,700 Santa Monica residents who are age 75 or older to find at least 600 people willing to participate in the project, according to project director Harriet Aronow.
Of those, 300 will be visited by nurses, interviewed and given physical examinations, and their progress will be monitored for at least two years, she said.
The other participants will be a comparison group for whom no services are provided. Dr. Laurence Rubenstein, one of the coordinators of the project, said similar studies in Europe have shown that in-home assessment and intervention lower the mortality rate, reduce the need for hospitalization and cut medical costs for senior citizens.
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