Health & Safety Advice
Here are some websites and links with information about how to avoid or manage a wide variety of some of the more common problems faced by older adults.
Shopping Guidelines during Pandemic. 22.10.20b This guide was created to help AVV volunteers and members reduce their risk of infection from going shopping during a viral pandemic. It provides a brief overview of the issues and detailed steps that should be considered in organizing, executing, and concluding a shopping trip. The goals are to eliminate any possible contamination of the shopper, the transporting vehicle, the items purchased, and their final destination - home. This one-page guide is available: here.
Senior Resource Directory is an extensive listing of services identified by Community Care and the Area Agency on Aging of Lake & Mendocino Counties. Their online directory available here: http://www.seniorresourcedirectory.org/ lists the following categories:
- Emergencies
- Active Living
- Adult Day Programs
- Caregiving
- End-of-Life
- Energy Assitance
- Finance
- Food and Nutrition
- Grandparenting
- Health Services
- Housing & Shelter
- Insurance
- Legal & Advocacy
- Long Term Care Settings
- Mental Wellness & Counseling
- Senior Centers
- Substance Abuse & Addiciton
- Telephone Reassurance
- Transportation
- Veterans
They also provide Senior Information & Assistance by phone Monday through Friday at 707-468-5132 or by email at IASpecialist@hotmail.com.
Medicare Nursing Home Compare is a US Government website that has a tool for nationwide search and comparison of every Medicare and Medicaid-certified nursing home in the country. They define a "nursing home" as a place for people who can’t be cared for at home and need 24-hour nursing care. The site includes a guide for choosing a nursing home as well as a "nursing home check list. The site claims that the data on this site is "updated on or about the fourth Wednesday of the month." https://www.medicare.gov/nursinghomecompare/search.html
National Council on Aging maintains a website called “Aging” that has a variety of well-researched articles on health, lifestyle, finance and assisted living solutions. Here are five examples of the numerous articles available:
- The Complete Guide To Insomnia
- Guide To Parkinson’s Disease Symptoms, Stages And Treatment
- 15 Tips To Become Computer Savvy At An Older Age
- The Complete Guide To Medical Marijuana For Seniors
- Falls - The Biggest Threat To Senior Health and Safety
Website: www.Aging.com
Tech-enhanced Life is a public benefit company that provides “independent and objective, analysis, product evaluations, and explorations to make the challenges of growing older less challenging — for you, or for older adults you care about.”
The information presented comes from a variety of "Contributing Experts, Collaborators, Evaluators, & Makers" who are identified on the website. Other input comes from five small groups of seniors called Longevity Explorers. They meet regularly to share real life experience with the product or topic.
The result is a library of information that ranges widely. For example, a search for information about “hearing aids” returned 213 hits including comments from individual users to reviews of new devices by experts to a link to the Consumers Report: Hearing Aid Buying Guide. A search for “fall prevention” returned 78 hits covering everything from devices to exercises to home modifications; one entry was from the Longevity Explorers group at the San Francisco Village.
Website: www.techenhancedlife.com
More to come…
The Village Coordinator
707-684-9829 andersonvalleyvillage@gmail.com