Three years ago, The Village, a not-for-profit community in Gainesville, Fla., decided to take a more proactive approach to residents’ well-being and health by introducing its Village Vitality program.
To start, every resident underwent a wellness assessment, which looked at six dimensions, including cognition and social engagement. The results were tallied into a score and then individual plans were created for each resident with proactive steps to maximize health.
That benchmark guided The Village in developing programming, including a clinic with geriatric physicians who are available five days a week and an occupational therapist, podiatrist, optometrist, and other specialists who visit once a month. But in addition to physical needs, the community also addressed cognition issues.
In June, The Village partnered with the University of Florida to introduce a new Vital Mind program that’s focused on research and programming to improve the brain health of residents.
Dr. London Butterfield, a post-doctoral fellow at the university and the program coordinator, says the program comprises several eight-week programs targeting memory, thinking, and mood. Free and open to all nondementia residents at The Village as well as the surrounding community, participants are randomly assigned to do cognitive training through computer-based brain game exercises or mindfulness meditation.
To run the program on campus, The Village converted a two-bedroom apartment into a “vital learning laboratory,” where the bedrooms were modified to house meditation programs and computer equipment. The living room contains Nintendo Wii consoles and screens, the former den is an office, and the closets have been transformed into workspaces to run neurological, psychological, and mood assessments.
“It’s convenient that it’s set up like an apartment because when [residents] come in, they can sit at our kitchen table and get a drink,” says Butterfield. “We have a couch with a coffee table where they can relax and wait until we’re ready to see them.”
In addition to being conveniently located near residents, she says the grant-run program also illustrates The Village’s emphasis on healthy living. “The goal is to see what kind of activities will help to improve thinking and memory and mood in older adult populations,” she says.
Jim Antonucci, executive director of The Village, says the proactive approach has been well received, with more than 100 people participating and others on a waiting list to join. “Just from a psychological point of view, they believe that they’re doing something to better their own life,” he says.
