The Baltimore Experience Corps Study
Summary
The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of the Experience Corps program in preventing or delaying physical disability in older adults, by studying the effects of volunteerism on physical, social and cognitive well-being.
Description
The Baltimore Experience Corps Study is a randomized, controlled, community-based trial of the effectiveness of Experience Corps (EC) to determine if participation for adults 60 years and older, over two years of follow-up, results in better outcomes in the EC versus control arm in terms of mobility, strength, balance, and cognitive functioning.
The Experience Corps is a community-based model for health promotion for older adults embedded within a social engagement program. The program places older adult volunteers in meaningful roles in public elementary schools, bringing the time, experience, and wisdom of older adults to bear in improving academic and behavioral outcomes of children. The Experience Corps incorporates health promotion preventing disability and dependency associated with aging, into new, generative roles for older adults.
This program was initially designed by the Principal Investigator of this application, along with Marc Freedman of Civic Ventures, Inc. It has gone through two national demonstrations, neither of which evaluated the impact on older adults.
Study Design
Allocation: Randomized, Control: Active Control, Endpoint Classification: Safety/Efficacy Study, Intervention Model: Single Group Assignment, Masking: Single Blind, Primary Purpose: Treatment
Conditions
Aging
Intervention
Experience Corps
Location
Center on Aging and Health
Baltimore
Maryland
United States
21205
Status
Recruiting
Source
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Results (where available)
Links
- Source: http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00380562
- Information obtained from ClinicalTrials.gov on July 15, 2010
Medical and Biotech [MESH] Definitions
Skin Aging
The process of aging due to changes in the structure and elasticity of the skin over time. It may be a part of physiological aging or it may be due to the effects of ultraviolet radiation, usually through exposure to sunlight.
National Institute On Aging (u.s.)
Component of the NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH. Through basic and clinical biomedical research and training, it conducts and supports research into the nature of the aging process and diseases associated with the later stages of life. The Institute was established in 1974.
Empiricism
One of the principal schools of medical philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome. It developed in Alexandria between 270 and 220 B.C., the only one to have any success in reviving the essentials of the Hippocratic concept. The Empiricists declared that the search for ultimate causes of phenomena was vain, but they were active in endeavoring to discover immediate causes. The "tripod of the Empirics" was their own chance observations (experience), learning obtained from contemporaries and predecessors (experience of others), and, in the case of new diseases, the formation of conclusions from other diseases which they resembled (analogy). Empiricism enjoyed sporadic continuing popularity in later centuries up to the nineteenth. (From Castiglioni, A History of Medicine, 2d ed, p186; Dr. James H. Cassedy, NLM History of Medicine Division)
Aging, Premature
Changes in the organism associated with senescence, occurring at an accelerated rate.
Deja Vu
A subjective feeling that an experience which is occurring for the first time has been experienced before.
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