Thrive Where You Are - an exercise therapy video series for older adults

Thrive Where You Are – an exercise therapy video series for older adults

Status: Ongoing

Cleveland United States of America

Print this page City population: 39011317.8% over 60Practice started in 2015

Summary

With support from Cleveland State University’s (CSU) Office of Civic Engagement, the Cleveland Department of Aging and CSU’s Physical and Occupational Therapy programs collaborated to produce an instructional exercise therapy video series for older adults. The video features four Cleveland seniors demonstrating exercises that can be done from a bed, chair or standing. Each exercise focuses on strengthening the muscles required for movements used in daily living activities. The exercises are done under the guidance of physical and occupational therapy graduate students. The video was filmed at CSU’s therapy lab with a bathroom, kitchen and bedroom setting. Each exercise focuses on progression of strength and skill, offering variations as the senior advances. One of the featured seniors described the video series as the “bridge to help you get moving again”. The series will broadcast on TV20, the city’s TV station. It will also be available on CSU’s website, the city’s website and various social media sites. This Age Friendly Practice brings a community support to individuals who may be socially isolated. It will be accessible to any Cleveland resident with basic cable service on their television. Each video ends with Department of Aging staff encouraging viewers to contact the department for additional information about medical costs, transportation, nutrition resources and exercise options.

Website: http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/aging

Key facts

Main target group: Older people in general

Other target group(s): Home-bound older adults

Sector(s): Health

Desired outcome for older people:
Be mobile

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:

Accessibility
Intergenerational activities

Other Issues: Maintaining Independence, Aging in Place

Contact details

Name: McNamara, Mary

Email address: McNamara@city.cleveland.oh.us

Preferred language(s): English

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Research institution

Older people’s involvement: Older people helped to implement the age-friendly practice

Details on older people’s involvement: Older adults were involved in both designing and implementing this age friendly practice. Working with the CSU students, the older adults provided feedback on what exercises would be beneficial to a homebound older adult based on their personal experiences. Each of the older adults involved were filmed doing multiple exercises in various homebased settings.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Expansion plans:
We plan to share the Thrive Where You Are video series widely in Cleveland through our city owned channel, websites and social media. We hope to use this as a model of bringing senior center type services to a homebound individual, creating a senior center without walls.

Looking back

Reflections:
A physical therapy professor at Cleveland State University was the key project coordinator. She had the ability to host the planning meetings, provide the film site with adaptive equipment, engage the students and welcome the older adults to campus and keep the project on task. The financial benefit to the older adults as consultants was well received. All members of the group expressed a desire to stay connected to each other which was a pleasant surprise. If we were to do it again, we would schedule the filming to occur over two days instead of one.

Challenges:
The videotaping process took more time because we used individuals who were not regularly on TV. A patient videographer was necessary. The services of the videographer were provided by the city at no cost to the project budget. Paying for a videographer would not have been feasible with the small project budget. The collaborating students and older adults did not know one another prior to project. Time was built into project to foster relationships. Additionally, the Department of Aging provided an “ Aging Services 101” to Cleveland State University students prior to the students meeting the older adults to familiarize the students with common challenges older adults face. Scheduling the day of filming needed to accommodate student’s schedule and their internships, professors’ schedule, use of the facility, day light traveling requests from older adults and the film team. Coordinating this involved many communications.