By Melissa Rohman July 21, 2020
Emma Office, a rising second year medical student and co-leader of the COVID-19 student volunteer effort at Feinberg, recently helped organize a successful phone call outreach program for older adults at risk of experiencing social isolation during the pandemic.
The program, which involves Feinberg student volunteers calling older adults living in the community and in long-term care facilities throughout the Chicagoland area to talk about topics such as coping strategies, health, sources of support, and personal topics like family and friends, was detailed in a study published in Journal of the American Medical Directors Association.
Read a Q&A below with Office about her involvement with the outreach program, the impact of COVID-19 on older adults and why she chose to attend Feinberg.
What do currently know about the impact of COVID-19 on older adults?
In general, older adults are at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19. For older adults, as with all people, physical distancing measures are essential to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. But at the same time, for over one-quarter of adults over the age of 60 that are living alone in the U.S., these same measures could also increase social isolation. We do know, in general, that social isolation is associated with many adverse physical and mental health outcomes in older adults, including increased risk of falls, reduced infection resistance and an increased risk of all-cause mortality.
Knowing this, Dr. Lindquist had the idea to design this phone call outreach program in hopes of providing companionship to older adults who might be more isolated during COVID-19, and also perhaps mitigate the risk of these outcomes that are tied to social isolation as the need for physical distancing continues over months and months.