Strengthening Care for Older Adults Through MN GWEP
Strengthening Care for Older Adults Through MN GWEP
The Minnesota Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program is shaping dementia-friendly care during Alzheimer’s Awareness Month and beyond.
Minnesota’s population is aging, and with it comes a growing need for healthcare professionals who are trained to care for older adults, including those living with dementia. The Minnesota Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (MN GWEP), based at the University of Minnesota, is working to close that gap through interprofessional education, community outreach, and accessible training tools designed to support age-friendly care across settings.
“Our primary goal is to enhance the workforce providing age-friendly care in Minnesota,” said Dr. Teresa McCarthy, a faculty associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. “We’ve raised the profile of aging.”
Funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), MN GWEP brings together faculty, students, clinicians, and community partners to improve care delivery to older adults throughout the state and region. Its programs extend beyond Minnesota into Wisconsin and Iowa and are designed for learners at every stage, from undergraduate students to long-term care staff.
As the country marks Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month this June, McCarthy pointed to the Dementia Friends program as one of the many impactful parts of MN GWEP’s work. Originally a community-based initiative, the program has been adapted for health sciences learners across disciplines, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical and occupational therapy, mortuary science, and public health.
“It’s an hour-long informational session about how we, as individuals in our communities, can interact with people with Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias in a supportive way,” she said. “It’s not heavy on biology. It’s not what’s going to be on the board exam. It’s about empathy.”
Students often arrive expecting a traditional lecture. Instead, they leave with new insight into what it means to live with dementia, or to care for someone who does. “People with no direct experience start to realize this is a big deal,” McCarthy said. “And people who have lived with someone with dementia suddenly have a different way of thinking about that relationship.”
Another key component of MN GWEP is its ECHO program, a series of virtual learning sessions for providers in long-term care and assisted living. The sessions are developed and led by an interprofessional team, reaching participants across urban and rural communities.
“We’ve gone far beyond the metro area,” McCarthy said. “We’ve had a really large catchment and successful ongoing interaction at that level.”
To support educators and trainers, MN GWEP has also created a series of geriatric care toolkits on topics including incontinence, geriatric assessment, delirium, suicide prevention in older adults, and ageism. These toolkits are designed to be practical and easy to use.
“They’re beautifully constructed and really easily usable, which I think is what’s making the difference,” McCarthy said. “Someone could literally take these slides and present a topic.”
The program has also partnered with the National Center for Interprofessional Practice to build and maintain a national repository of age-friendly educational resources. The site houses MN GWEP’s toolkits alongside curated content from across the country and worldwide.
“We’ve become kind of a powerhouse in that context,” said McCarthy. “Even nationally, people are recognizing that we’re the place to go to access information.”
Despite this progress, McCarthy said geriatric education has historically been underprioritized. “There’s just been a general dearth of geriatrics,” she said. “It is kind of a national crisis.”
She hopes MN GWEP will help reverse that trend by giving students early, meaningful experiences that shape how they view aging and older adults. “There are 95-year-old people out there cross-country skiing,” she said. “That’s not the vision that anyone has historically. We’ve made the mistake of training medical providers in nursing homes and hospitals, where they’re seeing people at their most vulnerable.”
For McCarthy, geriatrics is an extremely important and deeply rewarding field.
“You get to use your brain and your relationship with the patient and their family to make the best possible decisions,” she said. “It’s like being a private investigator. And I think it’s the most fun you can have in medicine.”