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Adult day services (ADS) provide care to adults with physical, functional, and/or cognitive limitations in nonresidential, congregate, community-based settings. ADS programs have emerged as a growing and affordable approach within the home and community–based services sector. Although promising, the growth of ADS has been hampered by a lack of uniform outcome measures and data collection protocols. In this article, the authors detail a recent effort by leading researchers and practitioners in ADS to develop a set of uniform outcome measures. Based upon three recent efforts to develop outcome measures, selection criteria were established and an iterative process was conducted to debate the merits of outcome measures across three domains—participant well-being, caregiver well-being, and health care utilization. The authors conclude by proposing a uniform set of outcome measures to (a) standardize data collection, (b) aid in the development of programming, and (c) facilitate the leveraging of additional funding for ADS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Color can be used successful in healthcare marketing programs. Healthcare marketing personnel must consider the primary benefit of a new service and then which color will emphasize that benefit. Complex information can be imparted through color because of the emotional responses that are aroused. Color graphics can identify a brand, a service or a niche for a healthcare company.

The viability of the field of environmental gerontology depends upon whether it can make itself practically relevant by helping to resolve some of the urgent, real-world problems facing older adults. Many of the problems relate to which and how residential environments might best forward the goals and aspirations of an aging population. More attention should be directed toward improving the environments of choice of older adults, which are not institutional settings, but rather their own homes located in neighborhoods and communities. To help direct attention, this article begins by linking the concept of the Third Age with theories of environmental gerontology and summarizes key empirical understandings of autonomy and security at the community level because these are the essential environmental attributes for the Third Age. Taking into account contextual issues for community-based living for aging suggests that relocation in the pursuit of residential normalcy ought to produce a diversity of environmental responses. We then sketch out the different ways in which three models of community-based living in the Third Age—the leisure-oriented retirement community, the naturally occurring retirement community, and the villages model—reflect contextual issues as they relate to residential environments for the Third Age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study on the perspectives and experiences of staff in the transition to a person-centered approach to care. It states the use of inductive qualitative analysis in analyzing information about staff perspectives and experiences gathered via narrative approach. The study revealed the dynamics and fluidity of the transition process and suggests that the person-centered approach to care substitutes the traditional model of care expressed by the three-stage transition process.

The article discusses the study which critically examines the concept, meaning, and assumptions of an epistemologically evidence-based design (EBD) and its relation to the traditional evidence-based environmental design. The authors contend that evidential standards tend to relate to Evidence Based Medicine supported by double blind trials and epistemological assumptions relevant to the practitioner-beneficiaries. However, the authors argue that the intuitivist and interpretivist style of thinking prevail in architectural design which is a mismatch to the traditional scientific thinking in medicine.

The article focuses on a set of environmental design principles that can be implemented by the elder and dementia care staff. Design principles are the general rules and statements that guide aesthetic, functional and compositional decisions. These principles are intended to guide care staff's efforts in creating supportive physical environment that balance physical and psychological accommodation of program participants.

The article presents a study on the assessment of pre- and post-person-centered care (PCC) activity programs in an adult and demetia day center in Midwestern areas. It mentions that the calendars for pre- and post-PCC activity programs were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed through mixed methods. Findings showed that post-PCC activity programming is more person-centered compared to pre-PCC activity program. However, the PCC model was found to be rare in adult and dementia day center.