Exploring Information and Assistance Calls During COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Area Agencies on Aging (AAA) developed the service of Information and Assistance Calls to help older adults during COVID-19. This study examined how well AAA managed this service. We used the random effect model on panel data of California 33 Planning and Service Area’s (PSA) calls across 49 weeks. We examined the association between calls (either inbound or outbound calls as the dependent variable) with COVID-19 cases, deaths, and PSA characteristics (independent variables). We observed a positive relationship between the number of calls (either inbound or outbound) with COVID-19 deaths and older adults living alone, i.e. the number of calls and the number of COVID-19 deaths and older adults living alone are positively correlated. We also observed a negative relationship between the number of calls and COVID-19 cases, i.e. the number of calls and COVID-19 cases are negatively correlated. These findings might result from volunteer and social worker shortages, encouraging AAA to provide more preventative and beneficial services to older people.

KEYWORDS:

• aging
• community service
• COVID-19
• phone calls

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

• California Department of Aging [Internet]. California: Information and Assistance Calls: Local Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs). [cited 2021 April 2]. Available from: https://aging.ca.gov/Data_and_Reports/COVID-19_Data_Dashboard/#calls-aaa.

• California Open Data Portal [Internet]. California: Information & Assistance Calls provided to older adults in response to COVID-19. [cited 2021 April 2]. Available from: https://data.ca.gov/dataset/information-assistance-calls-provided-to-older-adults-in-response-to-covid-19.

• California Health and Human Services Open Data Portal [Internet]. California: Key characteristics of Californians age 60 and over. [cited 2021 April 2]. Available from: https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/key-characteristics-of-californians-age-60-and-over.

• California Department of Public Health [Internet]. California: COVID-19: California Case Statistics. [cited 2021 April 2]. Available from: https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/

• California Open Data Portal [Internet]. California: COVID-19 cases – deprecated. [cited 2021 April 2]. Available from: https://data.ca.gov/dataset/covid-19-cases.