Evaluating an intergenerational art and storytelling program with older adults and medical students

Abstract

Older adults in residential communities face loneliness and isolation, challenges exacerbated by COVID-19, leading to adverse physical and mental health outcomes. Intergenerational arts and humanities programs have been successful in addressing these challenges while also enabling medical learners to better understand aging populations. Draw YOUR Story, a program at a Houston residential senior living community, connects premedical and medical student volunteers with older adults through an art and storytelling activity. To evaluate the program, we conducted a focus group with older adults and pre and post-volunteering student surveys with questions about attitudes towards older adults and an Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Student surveys (n = 18) showed increased comfort working with older adults after volunteering (p = 0.02). Students who spent less time volunteering reported a decline in their perceptions of older adult quality of life, when compared to more frequent volunteers (p = 0.02). Older adults shared that the program encouraged learning new skills, offered time for reflection, connected them to medicine, and furthered desire for community. Draw YOUR Story benefitted students and older adults, increasing student comfort with older adults, providing aging adults opportunities to learn new skills and reflect, and building intergenerational connections.

Keywords:

• Older adults
• aging
• art
• storytelling
• intergenerational
• medical students

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all Draw YOUR Story participants for sharing their stories with us. We appreciate Alonso Martinez at St. Dominic Village for assisting with volunteer onboarding and logistics and Carol Jacob for her advice throughout our program’s design and implementation. We also thank Dr. Alana Newell for her assistance with statistical analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Baylor College of Medicine (H-52160).

Additional information

Funding

The Draw YOUR Story program was supported by the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship of Houston-Galveston.