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The Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors provides healthcare and health and wellness services to seniors in the community.

Mission, Goals and Value Principles

• Our mission

  The mission of ºÚÁÏÊÓƵ’s Decker College of Nursing and Health Sciences is to . . . disseminate and advance knowledge about human healthcare, health promotion and the treatment of illness in individuals, families and communities, with an emphasis on rural and other vulnerable populations.

  Consistent with that mission, the Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors engages citizens to build healthy communities by providing respectful, high quality, integrative geriatric healthcare, and holistic health and wellness services to the community through collaborative partnerships. The focus of the Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors is to enhance the health of older persons and their loved ones with dignity and respect.

• Our goals

  The Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors aims to: 

  • Promote healthy lifestyles for the community through care for older persons and their loved ones.
  • Provide cost effective, convenient geriatric healthcare services to the community.
  • Provide respectful healthcare services that are sensitive to the diverse geriatric community.
  • Foster diversity in knowledge and experience among the community
  • Provide support to nursing and health science students, faculty and staff in the areas of teaching, learning and research.
• Our value principles

  To carry out the mission and goals, all services within the Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors adhere to the principles of NCQA’s Patient-Centered Medical Home model and the Rainbow PRISM model, which serve as a core philosophy that is taught, modeled and expected by everyone involved with the Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors. 

  PRISM is an acronym for Presence, Respect, Information, Services and Movement. The term "Rainbow" expresses the commitment to respect human diversity upheld by the faculty and staff of the Ford Family Wellness Center for Seniors.

  • Presence is being with the community, face to-face, paying attention, being reliable, being with community and staying with community over time.
  • Respect is profound reverence for human dignity, honored consistently, demonstrably and without exception. This means it is community values and hopes and dreams that determine the healthcare provider's activities.
  • Information is of two kinds: information about clients and information that clients want.
    • The healthcare providers and staff listen first, last and always; acknowledging clients' freedom and responsibility to make their own choices in life.
    • Healthcare providers and staff make information available to clients that the clients say they want to support informed decision making.
  • Services are helpful or useful acts on the part of healthcare providers and staff, directed toward clients, and are tangible, desirable and meaningful from the clients' perspective.
  • Movement is change in a desired direction in the lives of individuals, families and groups. Healthcare providers and staff encourage, support and participate in movement as determined by community. This means that the healthcare providers and staff follow the lead of the people served and change activities as people change

Clinical Services

The center can provide a full, clinical patient evaluation, which includes:

• Integrated geriatric care
• Consolidating past history
• Testing mental status
• Assessing mental, functional and environmental status
• Assessing caregiver stress/coping
• Case management
• Student education

Community Education Services

Services available from the center's Community Education Project include:

• Development of elder care training programs for volunteers, family members, professional special care providers and home healthcare professionals to provide proper care for patients in the home
• Training and recruitment of volunteers to provide in or out-of-home respite services to relieve over-burdened family members
• Development and distribution of educational materials to inform the public about the disease and available elder care community resources
• Individually tailored elder care educational materials for families
• Training for long-term care staff and special care providers
• Workshops and conferences for individuals caring for older persons