News Feature

Stonington Originally published in Island Ad-Vantages, January 15, 2015 New program asks how to keep Island residents ‘thriving in place’ Healthy Peninsula partners across communities

Participants included Helen Deuschle, LCSW, of Island Family Medicine, at left, Charlie Osborn, Island Family Medicine board member, Anne Williams of NeighborCare, second from right, and Linda Winowski, at far right.

by Anne Berleant

What kinds of health services are needed on the Island for seniors? How does a public health organization find out what they are? What are the best ways to deliver services to the uninsured, under insured and under served?



The answer, said Janet Lewis, executive director of Healthy Peninsula, comes by talking to seniors, those with chronic health conditions, and caregivers, in focus groups and across the kitchen table.



Healthy Peninsula recently kicked off the first year of a three-year, $300,000 grant for Thriving in Place, a program that partners with community organizations to identify and provide services needed on the Island and Blue Hill Peninsula.



“We are the backbone organization that is trying to coordinate many, many pieces,” said Lewis at a community breakfast hosted by the Healthy Island Project on January 13 at the Community of Christ Church.



Partners in the grant are Friendship Cottage in Blue Hill, a day center for seniors with memory loss; At Home Downeast, a membership organization providing transportation and home visits; Eastern Area Agency on Aging; Atlantic Mental Health Clinic; Hancock County Home Care and Hospice; Hospice Volunteers of Hancock County; Coast Care Team of Blue Hill Memorial Hospital; and Penobscot Bay Press, parent company of Island Ad-Vantages.



The goal is not to just get information and resources out in the community but to find out exactly what services are needed. “Healthy Peninsula wants to know,” said Lewis.



And she quickly received one answer: transportation, both on the Island and getting off the Island.



“It’s a critical, critical issue,” said Anne Williams of the Island’s NeighborCare organization. “All those wonderful services. If we can’t get there, they’re not worth a hill of beans.”



“If we had a wish list, it would be number one,” added Helen Deuschle, a licensed clinical social worker with Island Family Medicine.



While transportation is not specifically addressed in the first year of the TIP grant, “that doesn’t mean no one’s working on it,” said Lewis. “We can still identify ways to help transportation needs for specific events.”



“It’s already been identified as a huge problem in Maine,” said TIP Coordinator Anne Schroth.



A subsequent meeting was scheduled to discuss transportation and other barriers to senior health services on the Island. Invitations are planned for Andrea Brown of Brown’s Busing and Joe Perkins of Washington Hancock Community Agency, who is “involved with transportation questions on a state level,” Lewis said.



Year one of Thriving in Place



“What everybody wants is to stay home, as long as they can,” Lewis said. “We’re Mainers. We’re independent. We want to stay home.”



Keeping people safe and supported at home is the “overarching goal” of the TIP grant, Lewis continued.



The programs for the first year of Thriving in Place came from talking to 80 people in focus groups and at kitchen tables. They include:



Grief on the Installment Plan: a support group and training for grief management aimed at those caring for someone who is “dying by inches,” Lewis said. Healthy Peninsula is working with Friendship Cottage and the hospices on this program. A caregiver support group is also being offered at the Island Nursing Home.



Cooking Matters: a pre-diabetes cooking curriculum that teaches new ways of shopping and preparing meals. “I’ve taken that program and it’s a fabulous one,” said one attendant. “Very eye opening.”



Curriculum for Caregivers: addresses issues of those who care for people with chronic health issues, including “kids aging out of their services,” Lewis said. Program partners are AMHC and Friendship Cottage.



Training Community Navigators. An Eastern Area Agency on Aging curriculum will be used on what services are available in the community. Navigators will “act as gatekeepers for those services,” Lewis said.



Clinics of Expertise: on topics like living wills and the newly identified transportation issue. Identifying topics of interest in the community is important; ideas can be sent to aschroth@healthypeninsula.org.



Provider Network: an online resource directory of available services to educate caregivers and organizations that will be hosted on the Blue Hill Memorial Hospital website under Healthy Peninsula. “Navigating the long-term care system is impossible,” Lewis said, with resources “an ever-changing thing. No one knows what they are.”



One attendee suggested a three-ring binder as a way to provide information in print, which could be placed at venues like hair salons, post offices, health centers and libraries.



While these programs are being implemented, goals for the second year need to be created—again, through talking with people.



“Who are the folks to connect with and how [do we] reach them?” Lewis asked. She cited the Island Fishermen’s Wives Association as a group who could give Healthy Peninsula ideas and information. “Who can introduce us so we can have a conversation right off the shoot?”



Where the grant came from, where it’s going



In the first year of Thriving in Place, of $100,00 in grant money, Healthy Peninsula disbursed $63,000, plus $10,000 of its own funds to its partner organizations to implement and augment programs. The remaining money provides staff salaries, administrative meetings and volunteer stipends and pays WHCA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and Healthy Peninsula’s fiscal agency, for financial and related administration.



The $300,000 grant for Thriving in Place was awarded to Healthy Peninsula by Maine Health Access Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization, over three years. MeHAF’s mission is to “promote access to quality health care, especially for those who are uninsured and under served, and improve the health of everyone in Maine,” according to its website.



This year, Thriving in Place is focused on Deer Isle, Stonington, Penobscot and Castine, with other Peninsula towns to be added next year.



The goal is to “improve health outcomes and reach the community’s most vulnerable,” said Lewis. For some, she added, “thriving in place might just be surviving in place.”



“What happens in year four?” asked Charlie Osborn, a board member of the Island Medical Center.



“The idea is to be sustainable,” said Lewis. “This is the testing ground…[if] something proves good, it gets in [an organization’s] budget.”



“It takes a leap of faith,” continued TIP coordinator Anne Schroth. “You have to try new things, experiment, let stuff fail. We don’t have a specific plan for year four because we have to see what works in years one, two and three.”



Upcoming meetings



Tuesday, February 3, Healthy Island Project and Healthy Peninsula, on addressing transportation and identifying needed services: 8:30 a.m., St. Brendan’s, Deer Isle.

