Primary Care Trainees Learn about Aging in Place via an Academic-Area Agency on Aging Partnership

Despite the essential role of Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs), a national network of agencies that help older adults age in place, there is low awareness and utilization of their community resources among primary care providers for their older patients.

We describe a partnership between an academic institution and two Washington State AAAs and the development, implementation, and feasibility of an "AAA practicum," a novel community-based experiential training opportunity for primary care trainees to increase awareness and understanding of community-based resources for older adults.

AAAs and academic geriatricians collaborated to develop the practicum curriculum which includes orientation, experiential visits, and debriefs with AAA staff. The practicum was evaluated via qualitative and quantitative analysis of participant surveys.

A community-academic partnership can be leveraged to successfully design, implement, and sustain a curriculum that teaches primary care trainees how to effectively help older adults age in place. Seventy-seven trainees completed the practicum including family medicine residents, advanced practice nursing students, and geriatric medicine fellows. Trainees described feeling empowered to connect their patients to AAA resources. Aging in place can be supported via partnerships across clinical and community organization silos, and these same partnerships can be leveraged to support curricula for future primary care providers.