NU470 Unit 10 wellness program proposal example

Walk With Ease in Millside: A Funding Proposal for Four Cohorts, an Evening Group and a Line for Bus Passes

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

NU470: Regenerative and Restorative Care Spheres - A Wellness and Prevention Focus

Unit 10 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Composite town, clinic and budget written as a model document. Unit costs are bracketed; a real proposal would take them from local quotes.

Need

The Unit 8 profile put arthritis prevalence, as modeled for small areas, at [38] percent and physical inactivity at [36] percent among Millside adults, against [27] and [22] percent in the Heights (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d.). Outpatient therapy and cardiac rehabilitation sit across the river, a bus ride with a transfer, and nearly a fifth of Millside households do not own a vehicle. The Unit 9 analysis showed that weekday daytime hours shut out shift workers. Millside has a senior center with space and no structured exercise class.

Program

Walk With Ease is a six-week program in which a trained leader meets a group three times a week for about an hour: a short health talk, a warm-up, a walk of increasing length and a cool-down with stretching. Participants receive a guidebook and set their own walking goals. The proposal runs four cohorts of up to 15 people in year one: two morning cohorts at the senior center, one morning cohort at Grace Church hall, three blocks from the old mill, and one evening cohort at the church hall, from 5:30 to 6:30, for people who work day shifts or care for grandchildren after school.

Why This Program

Two alternatives were weighed. A falls prevention class would serve restoration but addresses a narrower group, mostly those who have already fallen or fear falling. The National Diabetes Prevention Program would serve prevention but runs for a year, asks more of participants and targets only people with prediabetes. Walk With Ease was chosen because walking serves both spheres at once: it eases arthritis pain and restores function for people who already have joint disease, and it adds weekly activity that lowers cardiometabolic risk for everyone in the group.

Evidence

In an evaluation of the group and self-directed formats, participants in both reported less pain, stiffness and fatigue and better perceived function after six weeks, and several gains held at one year (Callahan et al., 2011). Federal physical activity guidelines advise adults with chronic conditions to be as active as their abilities allow, with a target of 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, and advise older adults to add balance training (Piercy et al., 2018). Walking is the most accessible way to begin, since it needs no equipment and can be continued alone after the cohort ends.

Staffing

Two walk leaders from Millside, trained and certified through the Arthritis Foundation's leader course. Each leads two cohorts.

One nurse coordinator at [0.2] FTE, provided in kind by the hospital, who screens participants, collects measures, handles referrals for anyone whose pain or blood pressure raises concern, and reports to funders.

A volunteer at each evening session to check in participants and hand out bus passes.

Budget

Every cash line is a quantity multiplied by a unit cost.

Leader stipends: 2 leaders x 2 cohorts each x [$2,400] per cohort = [$9,600]

Leader training: 2 leaders x [$300] = [$600]

Guidebooks: 60 participants x [$20] = [$1,200]

Bus passes: 30 participants x 6 weeks x [$20] per weekly pass = [$3,600]

Custodial time for the evening cohort: 18 sessions x [$50] = [$900]

Outreach flyers in English and Spanish, printed and mailed: [$1,000]

Chair stand kits, each a straight chair and stopwatch: 2 x [$100] = [$200]

Data entry for evaluation: 60 hours x [$25] = [$1,500]

Total cash request: $18,600. In kind: the church hall and senior center rooms, donated; the nurse coordinator's time, from the hospital.

Funding

Older Americans Act Title III-D funds, administered through the Area Agency on Aging, are limited to evidence-based health promotion programs; the proposal asks the agency to confirm that Walk With Ease meets its criteria and requests [$10,000]. The remaining [$8,600] is requested from the hospital's community benefit program, which the hospital's last community health needs assessment tied to arthritis and inactivity in Millside.

Evaluation

Measures were chosen so that a nurse and two leaders can collect them in the first and last sessions of each cohort:

Attendance: sessions attended out of 18, recorded by the leader. Target: at least 60 percent of participants attend 12 or more.

Lower body strength: the 30-second chair stand test, the number of full stands from a chair with arms crossed in 30 seconds, which is reliable and valid in community-dwelling older adults (Jones et al., 1999).

Pain: a 0 to 10 rating of average joint pain over the past week.

Results are reported by cohort, with the evening cohort shown separately so the funder can see whether it reached shift workers.

Sustainability

Year one tests whether Millside residents come, stay and improve. If attendance and chair stand scores meet their targets, the proposal will seek continued funding at the hospital's next community health needs assessment, and the two leaders can train a third from among past participants. Graduates will be invited to a weekly self-led walking group that meets at the church hall, which costs nothing to run.

References

Callahan, L. F., Shreffler, J. H., Altpeter, M., Schoster, B., Hootman, J., Houenou, L. O., Martin, K. R., & Schwartz, T. A. (2011). Evaluation of group and self-directed formats of the Arthritis Foundation's Walk With Ease program. Arthritis Care & Research, 63(8), 1098-1107. https://doi.org/10.1002/acr.20490

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). PLACES: Local data for better health. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jones, C. J., Rikli, R. E., & Beam, W. C. (1999). A 30-s chair-stand test as a measure of lower body strength in community-residing older adults. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 70(2), 113-119. https://doi.org/10.1080/02701367.1999.10608028

Piercy, K. L., Troiano, R. P., Ballard, R. M., Carlson, S. A., Fulton, J. E., Galuska, D. A., George, S. M., & Olson, R. D. (2018). The physical activity guidelines for Americans. JAMA, 320(19), 2020-2028. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.14854