LA SED Senior Center emphasizes wellness support for Southwest Detroit seniors, caregivers as Latino population and funding needs rise

The Advanced Illness Care Program was founded within local Black churches and offers free, individualized support for people with advanced illnesses and their caregivers, helping them navigate various life and health issues and plan for end-of-life care. Since starting in 2015, the AICP has helped more than 1,600 patients, the majority of which are Black, and 55% of them have gone on to complete advance directives for end-of-life care.

The Castle Center provides adults with dementia in need of assistance care during the day. Open five days a week, the center offers participants meals, medication monitoring, personal care assistance with the help of nurses and volunteers, socialization and activities like arts and crafts. The Center also offers time off for caregivers — like family members — who often care for people with dementia 24/7.

Care Ring, in collaboration with other organizations like the University of North Carolina School of Nursing, launched The Bridge, a community-based healthcare initiative that aims to make preventive care easier to access. The Bridge features a mobile care unit that provides free health screenings, counseling support and connections to community resources. Since December 2022, The Bridge has provided care to more than 100 people, 39% of which didn’t have a regular doctor.

The Gender Diverse Care Coalition of New Hampshire works to expand access to gender-affirming care through free training, consultations with providers, education and advocacy work. The Coalition also has a website that offers a database of resources on gender-affirming care in the state and surrounding area. Through its offerings, the Coalition is working to increase the number of providers in the state who are comfortable and capable of providing care to transgender patients.

The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is a social health insurance program that provides access to free, quality healthcare services to corps members and civil servants and protects families from the financial hardship of medical bills. The NHIS covers out-patient care, medicine, diagnostic tests, maternity care, eye examinations and dental care, among other services. Since it was launched in February 2022, more than 2,000 corps members have benefited from the NHIS benefits.

The Umthombo Youth Development Foundation funds health education for students from poor, rural backgrounds. Upon graduation, these students are then more likely to practice medicine in the rural communities they call home, thus increasing access to care in those areas where it’s often scarce.

Birth in Color, in partnership with Birth Equity Action & Research to Transform Health (BEARTH) Village, is working to address the Black maternal mortality crisis. The community-based organizations use research and cultural wisdom to dismantle inequities Black women face during birth. The groups provide free doula care to provide care and advocate for women in healthcare settings. There are currently 80 available doulas who help about 350 women give birth each year.

The Partners in Caring Respite program pairs volunteers with people in the early stages of cognitive neurological disorders — like dementia — to offer care and companion programs, allowing them to build relationships and provide respite for family caregivers. Partners in Caring has expended to four counties across the state, serving over 400 families with its 70 on-call volunteers.

The Money Follows the Person is a federal program that increases access to Medicaid funds for home and community care services for people transitioning out of institutional care. The program has helped more than 101,000 people move out of long-term care facilities into community or home living. The program has also helped people save money by cutting taxpayers’ Medicaid and Medicare bills by about 23% for each person who was moved out of a nursing home or other institution. Based on the program’s success, the current administration is reviewing plans to extend or make Money Follows the

More than five million Americans have Alzheimer’s or similar illnesses, and that number is growing as the population ages - without any immediate prospect of a cure, advocacy groups have begun promoting ways to offer people with dementia a comfortable decline instead of imposing on them a medical model of care, which seeks to defer death through escalating interventions. An Arizona nursing home offers new ways to care for people with dementia.