Renée Branch Canady, PhD, MPA Chief Executive Officer at Michigan Public Health Institute | Twitter Website
Renée Branch Canady, PhD, MPA Chief Executive Officer at Michigan Public Health Institute | Twitter Website
The Inclusive Health Care (IHC) Taskforce was recently featured in Model D, a digital news magazine highlighting Detroit communities, businesses, and residents. The IHC Taskforce was convened by MPHI in 2023, alongside AARP Michigan and the Detroit Area Agency on Aging (DAAA). Primarily, the Taskforce’s purpose is to empower residents in the Metro Detroit area to reimagine how they prepare to get older. This includes addressing inequities in health care and providing support to combat the digital divide.
MPHI employee Dr. Fayana Richards, Senior Health Equity Consultant in the Center for Health Equity Practice (CHEP), was featured in the Model D article. Dr. Richards facilitates the education subcommittee of the IHC Taskforce.
“I’m really excited that a project like this exists for a few reasons,” Dr. Richards shared. “One is that ageism is really prominent in our society. And the thing about aging is that all of us do it. We age every single day. There is an overemphasis on youth culture that leads into assumptions about the possibilities and capabilities of older adults and how older adults should navigate spaces.”
The article highlighted the work of the IHC Taskforce and Dr. Richards’ subcommittee. The education subcommittee works to develop tools and training to encourage digital literacy among seniors. Currently, the subcommittee has been working to identify populations that haven’t previously been served from a digital equity and inclusion perspective. The subcommittee’s goal is to provide deliverables with greater reach and more encompassing subject matter. Dr. Richards explained that her subcommittee has been gathering information to determine what resources need to be built upon to achieve this goal.
“We’ve been working to get a sense of what’s already there because we don’t want to duplicate existing resources,” Dr. Richards said. “We’ve been trying to create a list of those existing digital resources and, using that, then ask partner organizations, ‘What is missing? What do older adults say that they need to know?'”
For more information on the IHC Taskforce, visit:
Michigan coalition works to address health disparities for older adults (modeldmedia.com)
https://www.detroitseniorsolution.org/inclusive-health-care-taskforce/
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