“Adding Life to Years” Dr. Larry Weiss Center for Healthy Aging
Larry Weiss
Teach Me To Grow Healthy:
The Intergenerational Community Garden and Indigenous Foods Program
T
his month’s article describes a program that was developed by three very innovative and industrious people who currently work on it
and contributed significantly to writing this article: Augustin Jorquez, Marta Malone, and Michael Marcus. The program is “Teach Me To Grow Healthy: The Intergenerational Community Garden and Indigenous Foods Program”. Its mission is to create a usable community-oriented, culturally sensitive program that improves the exercise, mental health, nutritional support, and holistic care of Indigenous and Non-Native older adult and youth communities. The goal is to reduce food insecurity by creating a working organic forage farm seeking to create an innovative, sustainable food system for Native and Non-Native communities and form a central distribution of seeds, sprouts, and bulbs for future intergenerational community gardens. The Center for Healthy Aging recognizes and acknowledges the tragic disparities among American Indian/Alaskan Native, and Urban Indian Populations. According to the American Indian Health Service: The American Indian/Alaskan Native people have long experienced lower health status than other Americans. Lower life expectancy and the disproportionate disease burden exist due to inadequate education, poverty, discrimination in the delivery of health services, and cultural differences. These are the broad quality of life issues rooted in economic adversity and poor social conditions. (Adding Life page 9)
Nursing Home Visitation / from page 7
8 |
April 2021 // www.SeniorSpectrumNewspapers.com
CMS’ Center for Clinical Standards and Quality. “That is why, now that millions of vaccines have been administered to nursing home residents and staff, and the number of COVID cases in nursing homes has dropped significantly, CMS is updating its visitation guidance to bring more families together safely. This is an important step that we are taking, as we continue to emphasize the importance of maintaining infection prevention practices, given the continued risk of transmission of COVID-19.” High vaccination rates among nursing home residents, and the diligence of committed nursing home staff to adhere to infection control protocols, which are enforced by CMS, have helped significantly reduce COVID-19 positivity rates and the risk of transmission in nursing homes. Although outbreaks increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission, as long as there is evidence that the outbreak is contained to a single unit or separate area of the facility, visitation can still occur. For additional details on the updated nursing home visitation guidance, visit: https://www.cms.gov/medicareprovider-enrollment-and-certificationsurveycertificationgeninfopolicy-and-memos-states-and/nursing-home-visitation-covid-19-revised
