Kim Gans<\/a>, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, and Kali Thomas<\/a>, a gerontologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, worked with the Mississippi State Department of Health and colleagues at Brown University to conduct a study published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology<\/a>. The study evaluates a cost-effective training program addressing social isolation among homebound older adults.<\/p>\n Gans and Thomas designed the program that consists of a video and website<\/a> to train drivers for federally funded meal delivery programs, like Meals on Wheels, to recognize the signs of social isolation and be more sociable with their clients.<\/p>\n As the U.S. population ages, home-delivered meal programs funded through Title III of the Older Americans Act are promising outlets for addressing food insecurity, socialization, and independence.<\/p>\n According to data from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, in 2021, 1.5 million homebound older adults received meals through home-delivered meal programs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe developed a simple, inexpensive intervention that has the potential to be widely disseminated to meal delivery programs across the country to help their drivers reduce social isolation among their homebound clients,\u201d says Gans, who is a principal investigator at UConn\u2019s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP<\/a>).<\/p>\n The authors held focus groups with meal delivery drivers from Mississippi, Rhode Island, Georgia, Texas, and California and subject matter experts to understand how drivers are trained to recognize social isolation and receive feedback on the video and website.<\/p>\n During the focus groups, delivery drivers indicated that social isolation is prevalent among their clients.<\/p>\n One focus group participant said, \u201cWe go to the client\u2019s house and they\u2019re there by themselves\u2026You are the only folks they do see during the week.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite this, they typically do not receive training to address isolation.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is how we were trained; we went in and said, \u2018We\u2019re interested in being drivers,\u2019 and she said \u2018Great, let\u2019s get your fingerprints\u2026Come in and get your list Friday.\u2019 I mean, that was our training,\u201d said another focus group participant.<\/p>\n After incorporating feedback, the research team worked with meal delivery programs in Texas, Rhode Island, and Mississippi to recruit participants to test the training intervention.<\/p>\n Overall, the researchers found that the video and website significantly increased drivers\u2019 intent to identify social isolation and engage with clients socially.<\/p>\n \u201cThe video helps alert viewers to the isolation experienced by those who live alone. Those who watch it can become better at recognizing the signs and doing something, even something small, to help alleviate that isolation,\u201d said one Rhode Island-based participant of the training video and website.<\/p>\n The next step in the project is to secure additional support to scale the intervention.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that we can get future funding to widely disseminate this intervention and study its implementation and effectiveness with Meals on Wheels program drivers across the country,\u201d says Gans.<\/p>\n Additionally, this project\u2019s implications extend beyond nutrition and can be adapted to other occupations serving homebound older adults, such as oxygen delivery and home health aides.<\/p>\n Gans is an expert in designing interventions for use in real world settings.<\/p>\n She is working on another project alongside Caitlin Caspi, associate director of InCHIP and Director of Food Security Initiatives at the UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health, to evaluate the effectiveness of innovative solutions<\/a> that Meals on Wheels of Rhode Island (MOWRI) is implementing to enhance programming. Thomas is a consultant on the project.<\/p>\n![\"Kim](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/KimGansheadshot.jpg\")