Getting a Little Creative— A New Intergenerational Living Partnership between Chatham and Vincentian Schenley Gardens

This article was originally published in the Winter 2021 edition of the Chatham Recorder Alumni Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

Experimenting with intergenerational living—housing arrangements that go out of their way to mix older and younger people—has been happening for years around the world, with benefits to young and old. For older individuals, regular social interaction improves overall health, creates cognitive stimulation, and may be associated with lower levels of an inflammatory factor implicated in age-related disorders like Alzheimer’s, osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers. For younger individuals, the opportunity can help alleviate financial stress, expand educational experience, and provide mentorship. 

Third-year entry-level Doctor of Occupational Therapy students Emily Smith, Dominique Peterson, and Kayla Raybuck live at Vincentian Schenley Gardens

With a new partnership between Chatham University School of Health Sciences and assisted care facility Vincentian Schenley Gardens in Oakland, these benefits are set to accrue for Chatham health sciences graduate students and Vincentian residents. 

In exchange for a low monthly rent, Chatham health sciences students agree to spend at least four hours per week with residents, doing everything from educational classes, social outings, parties, tech help, and more. 

That sounded good to Kelsey Hosack ’19, DPT ’22. “It was something I really wanted to do because I’m really interested in working with the geriatric population when I get my physical therapy doctorate,” she says. 

Hosack lived at Vincentian during the program’s inaugural year, from August 2020-May 2021. She was one of seven health sciences graduate students who participated in the program. 

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a wrench into plans for students and residents to spend much time together. “Instead of getting to plan activities and then work with the residents to complete those activities, we had to get a little creative,” says Hosack. “We got to come up with activities and plan them out and make sure they had all the materials they needed and then we gave them to the Schenley Gardens workers, who gave them to the residents, and then they got to perform the activities by themselves in small groups.” 

“We did little gift bags during Easter or Halloween, and then we did a lot of arts and crafts stuff as well,” she continues, citing Valentine’s Day cards and a miniature pumpkin-painting contest. “We also filmed ourselves reading our favorite poems for National Poem Day and a couple of us did videos of songs on instruments we played, and we did some weekly news compilation videos from YouTube, putting them together in a playlist that brings the residents up to date about what’s happening in the world.” 

Hosack says that toward the end of the spring term, once students had received their COVID vaccinations, they were allowed to interact more, but some challenges had taken root. “It was sometimes hard to get residents to come out and do the activities, since they’ve been so used to being in their rooms that they’ve developed new hobbies,” she says. But bingo was a hit. 

“The thing I liked the most is bingo,” agrees Vincentian resident Jean Bolden. “They (the Chatham students) have been very nice to me. They’ve sent flowers, a card, and candy.”  

“Having the opportunity to live with older people takes away some of the stigma around elderly adults,” says Christopher Luff, manager of personal care and community engagement at Vincentian. 

That’s of interest to Chatham Assistant Professor of Physical Therapy Michelle Criss, who researches ageism and attitudes toward aging, and to Assistant Professor of Occupational Therapy Kasey Stepansky, who researches quality of life among older individuals. “When the partnership started between Vincentian and Chatham, Kasey and I saw this as a really interesting way to look at students who were going to be living at an assisted living facility, and what this could mean for the quality of life of the residents who were living there,” says Criss. “There’s not a whole lot out there on quality of life in assisted living.” 

Though the team’s ability to reach out to students and residents has been challenged the past year by COVID-19, and while the pandemic continues to impact their ability to interview residents, Criss is hopeful that they—and the students—will be able to make a real difference for the residents. 

“In the surveys that we’ve conducted, people have talked a lot about isolation and loneliness, and how nice it would be to have someone to talk to,” says Criss. “So those are very easy fixes for students, once they’re allowed to get in there. Hopefully we can start crossing those small things off the list and start looking at larger, more programmatic things about how we can increase the quality of life for individuals in assisted living. And of course, we’ll feed ideas to our student residents for their interventions.” 

“We’ve been setting up meetings with the management at Vincentian to say ‘what can we do to help you’—not just for residents, but maybe there are things we can do for staff, too, like trainings we can help them with,” Criss continues. “We’re in academia, we have—a luxury, I would say. From a clinician standpoint, you don’t get paid to look up articles, to look up the evidence, but part of our research time is doing just that. So if we can help them in any way, we’re open to that as well.”   

If you’re ready to learn more about Chatham’s graduate health science programs, visit our website, which includes more information on the multigenerational living community at Vincentian Schenley Gardens as well as a variety of other experiential learning and funding opportunities.