The Family Center for Healthy Aging
The SLU Health Aging Clinic is a service provided by the Medical Family Therapy Program at Saint Louis University.
Mission
The purpose of the SLU Family Center for Healthy Aging is to provide a comprehensive and collaborative center for older adult clinical, research, and training initiatives to our St. Louis and surrounding communities. The center is also a “hub” for the Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) grant, a five-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to help train and educate a future workforce of professionals serving older adults in our health care system. This center will help grow SLU older adult services and streamline several processes with the activities on the grant.
The center helps advance the mission of both the University and School of Medicine in several ways. All facilitators, faculty and students who provide services in the center acknowledge the importance of values and knowledge of our communities to help offer the best person and family centered care possible. We take a biopsychosocial and holistic approach to the care of older adults, participating in events and activities that reach out to many of our underserved communities.
The center covers several important areas of work, which include:
Student facilitators conduct psychosocial groups around dementia (Cognitive Stimulation Therapy), loneliness and social isolation (Circle of Friends) and caregivers (The Caregiver Process Groups). Additionally, the center’s facilitators who are mainly graduate students help assist in the Medicare Annual Wellness visits for physicians. We have developed SLUCare Family Medicine-Des Peres as a Level 2 Age Friendly Health Systems site. At Des Peres, the center helps support the services in an integrated geriatrics clinic, called the “4Ms Clinic.”
The center continues to offer trainings that has drawn national providers, clinicians, and educators. SLU has been designated at the North American Cognitive Stimulation Therapy Institute, as recognized by the University College of London. This center promotes and hosts future CST trainings to larger audiences and help promote the excellent geriatrics care from SLU and our community partners. Additionally, the center hosts an annual June conference called “The SlU Healthy Aging Conference.” This is a chance to showcase our outstanding clinicians, researchers, and trainers from SLU on cutting edge topics and trainings for the general public.
One of the core areas of the center is the education opportunities and mentorship for learners in Geriatrics and older adult healthcare. Students and faculty continue to serve as participants, coaches, and judges for the collaborative Geriatric Case Competition. This has been one of the largest learning collaboratives across disciplines in the university, which SLU started back in 2014 to help engage healthcare students, residents, and fellows around specific geriatric skills. The center helps recruit students for applying to the Gerontology Certificate Program, an advanced training opportunity for mental health students to take advanced courses in dementia, caregiving, long term care, and older adult health topics.
Our center conducts research on cutting edge areas in dementia, loneliness, caregiving, mobility, age friendly health systems, and other older adult health issues. We are currently expanding a large database of existing data on our clinical services and screenings. We will look to continue to expand our work on implementing the Rapid Geriatric Assessment (RGA) and Saint Louis University Mental Status Exam (SLUMS) in different communities.
Staff
- Max Zubatsky, Ph.D., director
- Marla Berg-Weger, Ph.D., faculty
- Allison Gibson, Ph.D., faculty
- Jin Cho, Ph.D., faculty
- Wenjin Wang, clinical coordinator
- Kiara Hill, facilitator
- Payton Adams, facilitator
- Rickeah Henderson, facilitator
- Rachel Livingston, facilitator
- Jen Lauck, facilitator
Initiatives
Clinical Services
- Cognitive Stimulation Therapy: Cognitive Stimulation Therapy is an evidence-based intervention to help improve cognition for individuals with mild to moderate dementia. The group meets twice per week for 14 weeks. The goal is for participants to help engage with one another in a group setting while reminiscing about different memories to help improve cognition and mood.
- Circle of Friends: Circle of Friends is a group intervention that originated in Finland to connect older adults who are lonely and socially isolated. SLU has adapted these groups to on telehealth, where older adults can help connect around common interests and topics to reduce isolation. The intervention covers three main topics: exercise and strength, common hobbies, and therapeutic writing.
- Caregiver Process Groups: The clinic offers caregiver process groups for spouses or children caring for a loved one with dementia. These groups are not psychotherapy, but are targeted to help participants process topics, ideas and concerns surrounding caregiving. Each group is $5 per session. Times may vary on when the groups will meet during the week.
- SLU Mobile Van: Members from the SLU Health Aging clinic help provide community services both behavioral health and interdisciplinary half day clinics. Organizations and sites can request these community screenings, which normally take place on Fridays from 10am-1pm. If you would like to coordinate a half day clinic to help serve your individuals and residents, please email memoryclinic@health.slu.edu.
Research
Grant Funding: The Memory Clinic has several services that are tied to research and grants. We provide services and collect data on the following grants over the past year:
- HRSA Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program Grant
- HRSA Primary Care Enhancement and Training Grant
- Lutheran Foundation Grant
- St. Louis Community Foundation Grant (COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant)
- Regional Health Commission COVID Response Grant for Loneliness and Social Isolation
Publications and Presentations
Faculty and students publish articles from both data from clinical services and other areas of research.
Zubatsky, M., Berg‐Weger, M., & Morley, J. (2020). Using Telehealth Groups to Combat Loneliness in Older Adults through COVID‐19. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Berg-Weger, M., & Morley, J. E. (2020). Loneliness and social isolation in older adults during the Covid-19 pandemic: Implications for gerontological social work.
Stewart, D. B., Berg-Weger, M., Tebb, S., Sakamoto, M., Roselle, K., Downing, L., ... & Hayden, D. (2017). Making a difference: A study of cognitive stimulation therapy for persons with dementia. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 60(4), 300-312.
Zubatsky, M., Aragon-Prada, M., Muse, F., Rainey, P., & Martin, R. (2016). Navigating Without a Roadmap: Challenges of Early Alzheimer’s Caregivers With Their Health Care Team. Global qualitative nursing research, 3, 2333393616673465.
Berg-Weger, M., Tebb, S., Henderson-Kalb, J., Zubatsky, M., Lundy, J., & Hayden, D. (2015). Cognitive stimulation therapy: A tool for your practice with persons with dementia?. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 16(9), 795-796.
The Memory Clinic has presented at several local and national conferences on CST, Circle of Friends, caregiver well-being and other geriatric topics:
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IAGG World Congress (July 2017)
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International CST Conference in St. Louis (June 2019)
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Gerontological Society of America Annual Conference (November 2019)
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National Council on Family Relations (November 2020)
Training for Caregivers
- Caregiver Speaker’s Series: The speaker’s series is a way for both family and professional caregivers to hear topics from professionals working in the memory and aging field. These talks cover a variety of areas such as signs of dementia, power of attorney, driving and dementia, self-care for caregivers and navigating the healthcare system. These talks are free and are offered on Zoom. To get on the speaker’s series list, please contact the Memory Clinic at memoryclinic@health.slu.edu.
- Past Caregiver Speaker's Series Talks (PDFs):
- Advance Care Planning: Considerations for Dementia
- The Importance of Caregiver Well-Being
- Handling Caregiver Stress Through the Time of Covid
- Dementia Medications and Their Alternatives
- Dementia and Driving: Helping Caregivers Connect Clues and Prepare for Loved Ones' Driving Cessation
- Managing Someone Else's Money: Help for Financial Caregivers
- Dementia Caregivers and Coping: The Power of Narratives
- Self-Care: Creating Your Personal Self-Care Toolkit
- Impact of Loneliness & Social Isolation on Caregiver Well-Being
- “Pay it Forward”: This is an exciting initiative where caregivers can produce a 5-10 minute narrative of their caregiving experiences of a loved one. The goal is for caregivers to provide their own narrative story of being a caregiver and provide information for others to consider. This is a person-centered approach to care, where the community helps educate one another about ideas and strategies that help people cope with their loved one’s health issues.
Medical Student and Resident Training
One of the novel areas of training in the Memory Clinic is having residents and students shadow and observe different services and sessions. We have medical students along with residents from family medicine, internal medicine, geriatrics and psychiatry who gain more geriatrics experience during their shadowing of the Memory Clinic.
Webinars and Videos
- Working with Dementia Caregivers (for Professionals)
- Caregiving
- Addressing Loneliness and Social Isolation