Intergenerational Forum to Enhance Students' Engagement and Elders' Ehealth Literacy

Background:

Most transition-aged youth who enter college are living away from home for the first time in their lives. According to the American College Health Association (2014), they can be at risk for various mental health issues.  Even though technology adoption rates of older adults are increasing, they still lag significantly behind younger generations.  Health information technology (HIT) can provide a diverse array of online resources for low-income elders to manage their health problems and maintain social connections.  The Intergenerational Forum (IF) program was designed to offer valuable opportunities for at-risk college students to help and learn from low-income older adults via panel discussions and student-led tutorials on using HIT and social networking services. 

Methods:

This set of guided learning opportunities was designed to improve college students’ understanding of aging and health issues in their communities.  In this study, a total of 252 mentoring hours were provided in kind by 78 students.  The majority of these youth volunteers were aspiring health professionals who had received intensive academic and field training to strengthen their interpersonal skills and ability to build meaningful one-on-one relationships.  Fifty five low-income older adults (with mean age of 73) participated in the six-session IF tutorials.  The majority (61.9%) were ethnic minority elders.  Multiple methods were used to document key variables discovered by the implementation of the IF and to assess the effects of the project on our older adults as well as college students.  Survey instruments were administered to assist in the identification of factors that may explain the effectiveness of the implemented activities between the pretest and posttest. 

Results:

Findings revealed that as a result of IF, students were able to improve their knowledge and attitudes toward working with older people measured by Facts on Aging Quiz. (t=8.28, p<001).    

Students were able to combined ideas from courses when completing this IF assignment.  Particularly, levels of active and collaborative learning were enriched by engagement with people representing different economic backgrounds (t  =4.46, p<001 and religious beliefs (t =3.91, p<.001).   

Major themes emerged in students’ narrative data revealed their learning outcomes in the areas of self-awareness, empathy, empowerment, and new perspectives about ageism.   

Older adults presented significant improvement between pretest and posttest in various outcomes such as ehealth literacy (t=-4.61, p<001)).  anxiety about technology (t=2.37, p<.01), self-efficacy (t=-7.52, p<.001), self-confidence (t=-3.11, p<.001), and social connections (t=7.53, p<.01). 

Conclusion:

The IF program appears to be a perfect opportunity to have college students mentor older adults.  Student mentors help older adults overcome potential technology communication barriers, while refining their interpersonal skills and receiving community service credits in return.  Hence, the IF produced synergistic effect by improving older adults’ utilization of health information and strengthening cultural competency among youths.