MINORITY ELDERLY HEALTH PROMOTION CENTER

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The University of Illinois at Chicago has established a Minority Elderly Health Promotion Center (MEHPC) that focuses on ameriolating health risks for minority older adults. The theme of the MEHPC is health promotion of minority older adults through modification of dietary intake, exercise, and other health practices. The theme reflects an important collection of health risk factors associated with chronic disease in minority older adults. All research projects within the Center view health behaviors in terms of stages along a continuum in which the objective is to move a person from one stage to the next. The primary tools to move older persons from one stage to the next include education about the risk factors (knowledge), maximizing self-efficacy and outcome efficacy, increasing social support, and changing perceptions associated with the behaviors such as barriers and benefits. The Minority Elderly Health Promotion Center-UIC aims to: a) provide resources for conducting research on health promotion in minority older adults, b) stimulate and support new, high-quality multidisciplinary health promotion research on minority older adults, and c) facilitate dissemination of successful health promotion programs and products to community settings and wellness programs for application. The Center is comprised of community and academic advisory groups, core support groups, and research facility. During the first three years, the MEHP Center will conduct four developmental research projects. The are: 1. Exercise Promotion of Minority Elderly in Senior Center 2. Improving Exercise and Dietary Behaviors in Black Elders 3. Effects of Menopause and Health Promotion in Older Minority Women. 4. Health Behaviors of Multiethnic Hispanic Elderly Taken together, the four projects represent a programmatic research approach to health behaviors in minority older adults. The four projects have been unique and shared characteristics including: an emphasis on meaningful community sites; shared theoretical perspectives; common research questions and, shared methodological and measurement resources. New research projects will be incorporated into the center through a competitive grant program which will award funding of two dissertations and up to four additional research projects in health promotion of minority older adults. Dissemination effects for the MEHP Center at UIC target academic and clinical faculty who teach aging, wellness and minority health, and program planners and administrators who oversee the design and delivery of wellness programs to seniors. The proposed MEHP Center will provide the opportunity for researchers with an interest in health promotion in older minority populations to develop projects in close collaboration with the community, that will reduce health risk behaviors and promote the health of minority older adults.