On June 20, 2019, Olga Stachova, CEO of MOSAIC, congratulated the successful launch of the Healthy Aging CORE website at the Fraser Health Surrey Central site. The website is a resource hub focusing on healthy aging. It also features Dementia Infocard and Navigating to Care video produced by the Building Trust Project, a community-based research project targeting immigrant older adults, funded by the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada’s Research Program (Grant # 17-26) and led by Dr. Sharon Koehn, Simon Fraser University. MOSAIC was one of the partner organizations and played an instrumental role.
Dr. Koehn mentions in her letter:
“Specifically, our partnership with MOSAIC was initiated because they identified the unmet needs of Korean seniors, the third largest ethnocultural group in the Fraser Health region. The decision to include immigrant-serving agencies as partners was grounded in my previous research, which established that these agencies play an important role in promoting health and social connection among immigrant older adults.
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An important research finding among older Koreans in our project was the high level of dissatisfaction they expressed about their visits to family doctors in Canada, even when the doctor spoke Korean. To address this issue, particularly concerning dementia, Korean-speaking MOSAIC staff suggested we create a YouTube video to coach older Koreans about the system encounter. Their clients are familiar with and enjoy such videos. The ASBC liaison identified materials on speaking to your doctor about dementia and the signs of Alzheimer’s Disease as helpful to their content development. System navigation materials from Fraser Health were also included.”
The Building Trust project is a great example of inter-sectoral collaboration of health, academia and community organizations. MOSAIC Settlement Programs is open to more opportunities to contribute our expertise in addressing service gaps and take part in innovative research projects in future!
