Summary of geriatric disease prevention publicity activities

This series of geriatric disease prevention publicity activities jointly carried out by the Qingchun Subdistrict Office, community health service centers and senior citizens' associations in the jurisdiction covered a total of 1,872 resident elderly people over 60 years old in 12 communities. A post-activity sampling survey showed that the accuracy of the understanding of three types of high-risk geriatric diseases among the elderly in the jurisdiction was 42% higher than before the activity. However, 31% of the elderly, disabled and elderly people living alone have not been reached. There is still much room for improvement in the efficiency and persuasiveness of the promotional content.

I visited eight community events this time, and the one that impressed me the most was Aunt Zhang Guiying from Jinxiuyuan Community. She is 72 years old and has suffered from high blood pressure for five years. She heard a lecture on health products at the gate of the community saying that "antihypertensive drugs hurt the liver, but eating celery can stabilize blood pressure." She secretly stopped taking the medicine for more than half a year. This time, the systolic blood pressure measured on the spot soared to 172, and her face turned pale with fright. Dr. Wang, who attended the consultation, talked to her for almost 20 minutes, breaking down common misunderstandings about health care product promotion one by one. He also adjusted her medication plan and left a private WeChat message for weekly follow-up visits. Before leaving, the aunt threw the two bottles of "antihypertensive health care solution" in her bag directly into the harmful trash can on site, saying that she would never believe those deceptions again. To be honest, those pseudo-science popularizations are like small advertisements in the cracks of community doors. They get through much faster than us. Many old people have been brainwashed before we can even visit them to promote them.

Regarding the format of this event, we had quite a few differences at the beginning. The team at the health service center insists on putting free screening first. They feel that many elderly people do not know they are sick at all, and it is useless no matter how much science popularization is done. It is better to do thorough screening first, so as to detect and intervene early. ； Colleagues in charge of aging work in the street believe that before screening every year, many elderly people did not take it seriously when they were found to have high blood pressure, and turned around to buy health products. The core is that their cognition has not kept up, and they must first improve their persuasiveness through popular science. In the end, we compromised and gave each event a 20-minute small lecture, followed by free clinic screening. Judging from the results, the combination of the two methods was indeed more effective. Of the 127 elderly people screened this time with abnormal blood pressure and blood sugar, 89 agreed to go to the hospital for further examination on the spot. The compliance rate was nearly 60% higher than last year's screening event. During the event, we also simultaneously promoted the signing of family doctors, and a total of 427 new elderly people signed up, and the follow-up follow-up can also keep up.

Of course, there are a lot of pitfalls in this event. The promotional brochure we prepared at the beginning was in small 5-size fonts. After printing more than a thousand copies, we found that the elderly could not read it clearly. The words were all crowded together and no one wanted to take them. Later, we urgently printed a large 3-size font version with hand-drawn comics. Only then did some elderly people gradually become willing to take it home. We originally wanted to catch up with the trend and did two online live broadcasts to popularize science. The total number of views was only 37, and 29 of them were children of the elderly. The elderly either did not know how to watch short videos or did not know that we had live broadcasts, which did not achieve the expected results at all. The most troublesome are the elderly people who stay away from home all year round. There are more than 200 elderly people over 85 years old and disabled and semi-disabled elderly people. We don’t have enough manpower and only visited 27 households. Most of the rest have not received the promotional content. There are also many elderly people who have reported that the content we talked about is too official and difficult to remember. On the contrary, the jingles compiled by the "health experts" in the short videos will never be forgotten after listening to them once.

Next, we don’t plan to do anything fancy, so we will first make up for the pitfalls we stepped on this time. I plan to cooperate with the team of elderly helpers in the community to make the core knowledge points of geriatric disease prevention into large-print pocket cards, and also record a one-minute dialect audio. When the elderly helpers come to deliver meals or clean at home, they will hand one to the elderly and play a paragraph, and it will gradually penetrate. We also want to find a few captains of square dance teams and senior building leaders in the community to serve as "health promoters" and give them systematic training first. They usually spend a lot of time with the elderly, and when they gather together to do household chores, they can make a few casual remarks, which is much better than those of us wearing work clothes talking for half an hour. Of course, some colleagues say that this method is too inefficient and it is better to put more advertisements in the elevators of the community. But to be honest, most elderly people forget about advertisements in elevators. It is better to say a few words to Jia Chang.

Having been working in elderly health care for so long, my biggest feeling is that there is no one-size-fits-all methodology, and a model that is suitable for other streets may not necessarily be suitable for the elderly in our jurisdiction. The solid experience gained from this activity, whether it is good or bad, will always be enough if we can avoid detours and help a few more elderly people when we hold activities next time.