Grand Canyon Times

The Arizona Center for Rural Health (AzCRH) is collaborating with the Center on Aging to improve the health of older adults in rural Arizona. A nearly $5 million, five-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) was awarded to the Arizona Center on Aging in June to support the Arizona Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP).

These federal funds aim to educate and train healthcare and supportive care workforces to provide age-friendly and dementia-friendly services for older adults in integrated geriatrics and primary care systems.

Dr. Mindy Fain, a leader in geriatric education and policy, stated, “These funds will allow our team to provide geriatrics clinical training to staff and students in tribal, underserved, and rural areas across Arizona. We will focus on a specific geographical area each year to further collaborative partnerships and provide focused training opportunities.”

As federally designated as the Arizona State Office of Rural Health, AzCRH brings expertise in improving the health and wellness of Arizona’s rural and underserved populations through education, technical assistance, data, and analysis.

Through these relationships, AzCRH will connect Tribal Organizations, Underserved and/or Rural (TTOUR) primary care sites/delivery systems education and training site partnerships with Arizona’s 17 Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs), including four tribal-operated CAHs, 52 provider-based, and independent Rural Health Clinics (RHCs) throughout the state of Arizona. AzCRH activities will ensure that the rural healthcare sites and supportive care workforce receive the AZ-GWEP curriculum to become Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS).

The GWEP refunding was part of a larger $206 million investment by the Biden-Harris Administration into further developing the nation’s geriatric workforce for rapidly changing needs of the country’s elderly population. Arizona’s portion of that is $4,923,639, administered statewide through the Center on Aging.

Part of this article was originally published by U of A College of Medicine, Tucson.