Influenza Vaccine Mobile Health Clinic for Older Adults

Running head: GERONTOLOGY
GERONTOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of University
Author’s note

GERONTOLOGY
SERVICE – Influenza vaccine mobile health clinic supported by multi disciplinary team of
Nurses, Doctors and Pharmacist.
TARGET POPULATION – Older adults over the age of 80 living in the rural community.
Questions:
How will your service foster the social engagement of older adults?
Social engagement has always been related to healthy ageing. It is a rich web of human
involvement that stimulates the brain and stimulates the mind and memory.
The multidisciplinary team might provide a holistic care to the patients by
communicating with the elderly people in a non –hostile manner. The service might also provide
referrals to other health care service pertaining to healthy ageing, such as dieticians or
occupational therapists and mental health clinics (Gibson et al., 2014). Furthermore, these mobile
health clinics might put up educational campaigns in rural areas, which might involve the
gathering of many elderly people. Group discussions, communications and interaction among the
elderly people might help in socialisation (Conroy & Turpin, 2016). Since, the mobile
vaccination clinic contains a range of allied health care professionals, a number of life style
suggestions can be provided to the elderly people, such as the preventive measures to the prevent
influenza infections, literacy about the clinic al manifestation of the disease, literary about
screening of the diseases, education about physical activities and recommendation of a healthy
life (Gibson et al., 2014). Nurses, in multidisciplinary team can act as patient advocates. They
can also provide referrals to important hospital care services or liaise the elderly patients to
Insurance services. As mentioned earlier, the health promotion campaign might involve several

GERONTOLOGY
activities that might facilitate the interaction between the other elderly people suffering from
similar problems. The elderly patients can be insisted to take advantages of the several
opportunities to engage with other people. The main aim of socialisation is to assist the older
adults in an independent living.
How will your service support healthy aging generally?
Mobile clinics have been used for decades to widen healthcare services in many settings
and contexts (Yu et al., 2016). For example, mobile clinics offer free service like blood pressure
checks, blood group testing or blood sugar testing in remote communities, where people do not
get access to the primary health care facilities. In order to accommodate the social cost of the
ageing and the chronic diseases, there is a need of strong primary care service (Verma, Khanna
& Chawla, 2014). Mobile clinics for the polio vaccines has achieved a worldwide success and
has helped to eradicate the virus from many countries. Mobile health clinics are an innovative
model of the health care delivery that could alleviate the health disparities among the vulnerable
population- elderly with chronic disease (Haq & McElhaney, 2014). Every year about 5- 10 %
of older adults gets influenza and in most of the cases it is self-limiting. Although influenza
vaccination is an entirely independent decision, the World Health organization has set a goal that
76 % of the elderly population should be vaccinated against influenza. In most the countries, the
goal is not met. Older adults are the most significant target group for influenza vaccination, 90%
of deaths reported as complications of Influenza (Ciszewski, 2008). Influenza vaccine might be
less effective in preventing illness but might reduce the severity of disease and increasing
complication and deaths. Hence, vaccination should become a routine part of the medical