My Life, My Health helps participants with ongoing health conditions to:

• Find better ways of dealing with pain and fatigue
• Discover easy exercises to help improve or maintain strength and energy
• Learn the appropriate use of medications
• Improve nutrition
• Talk effectively with family, friends and health professionals
• Understand new treatment choices
• Feel better about life

 

 

Ethos’ My Life, My Health healthy aging workshop will help you get the support you need, find practical ways to deal with pain and fatigue, discover better nutrition and exercise choices, understand new treatment choices, and learn better ways to talk with your doctor and family about your health. If you have conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic pain, anxiety, this workshop can help you take charge of your life.

This free workshop is conducted in two and a half-hour sessions, once-a-week, for six consecutive weeks.

 

 

Program serving the older adult population will receive a cash award and consulting services to build its capacity

Boston, MA (December 6, 2012) – Ethos, the elder services agency for southwest Boston, today announced that its AgeWell West Roxbury initiative has been named by Root Cause as a Social Innovator for the group's 2012-2013 Social Innovation Forum. Ethos is one of five Greater Boston non-profits selected by Root Cause to receive a $10,000 cash award and more than $100,000 in capacity-building services from Root Cause and its partners.

More than 70 social issue experts from the business, government, non-profit, and philanthropic sectors reviewed over 100 applications to select this year's Social Innovators. Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury was chosen for its work to build a community that is collectively activated around and responsive to healthy aging and local seniors' unmet needs. The program offers a diverse array of evidence-based health promotion/disease management classes; social, recreational and intergenerational programs; and healthy food and friendships via Community Cafés -- all at little to no cost to participants.

"This is an amazing opportunity for Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury to gain greater visibility for our work with the older adult population, expand our network, and build our capacity," said Dale Mitchell, executive director of Ethos, AgeWell West Roxbury's parent organization. "To have an organization like the Social Innovation Forum believe in the AgeWell program, and its mission, is indeed a great honor."

Since 2003, Root Cause's Social Innovation Forum has been working to create a social impact market that distributes resources to organizations based on performance in order to most efficiently and effectively solve social problems in Greater Boston. Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury joins Shelter Music Boston; Groundwork Lawrence; GRLZRADIO; and Safe City Academy, a program of Dorchester Youth Collaborative as Root Cause's selected Social Innovators for 2013.

As part of the Social Innovator designation, Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury will receive 12 months of intensive support from the Social Innovation Forum, including consulting, executive coaching, presentation advising, relationship building support, performance measurement support and other in-kind services valued at over $100,000. The organization will also receive a $10,000 grant from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation, the Healthy Aging track sponsor, plus an additional $10,000 consulting engagement the following year upon completion of Root Cause's key measures process.

"Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury is a natural choice for the Social Innovator award in healthy aging," said David Abelman, president of the Tufts Health Plan Foundation. "By tapping into the power of the community, the AgeWell program helps even the most vulnerable older adults not only stay in their homes but also remain socially and civically engaged."

In addition to the in-kind support, Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury will also have the opportunity to present at the Social Innovation Forum's annual Showcase. The event, which is modeled on a venture capital forum, gives Innovators the opportunity to pitch their organizations to an audience of funders – including business leaders, foundations, government officials, and philanthropists.

Boston, MA (December 6, 2012) – Ethos, the elder services agency for southwest Boston, today announced that its AgeWell West Roxbury initiative has been named by Root Causeas a Social Innovator for the group's 2012-2013 Social Innovation Forum. Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury is one of five Greater Boston non-profits selected by Root Cause to receive a $10,000 cash award and more than $100,000 in capacity-building services from Root Cause and its partners.

More than 70 social issue experts from the business, government, non-profit, and philanthropic sectors reviewed over 100 applications to select this year's Social Innovators. Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury was chosen for its work to build a community that is collectively activated around and responsive to healthy aging and local seniors' unmet needs. The program, offers a diverse array of evidence-based health promotion/disease management classes; social, recreational and intergenerational programs; and healthy food and friendships via Community Cafés -- all at little to no cost to participants.

"This is an amazing opportunity for Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury to gain greater visibility for our work with the older adult population, expand our network, and build our capacity," said Dale Mitchell, executive director of Ethos, AgeWell West Roxbury's parent organization. "To have an organization like the Social Innovation Forum believe in the AgeWell program, and its mission, is indeed a great honor."

Since 2003, Root Cause's Social Innovation Forum has been working to create a social impact market that distributes resources to organizations based on performance in order to most efficiently and effectively solve social problems in Greater Boston. Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury joins Shelter Music Boston; Groundwork Lawrence; GRLZRADIO; and Safe City Academy, a program of Dorchester Youth Collaborative as Root Cause's selected Social Innovators.

As part of the Social Innovator designation, Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury will receive 12 months of intensive support from the Social Innovation Forum, including consulting, executive coaching, presentation advising, relationship building support, performance measurement support and other in-kind services valued at over $100,000. The organization will also receive a $10,000 grant from the Tufts Health Plan Foundation, the Healthy Aging track sponsor, plus an additional $10,000 consulting engagement the following year upon completion of Root Causes key measures process.

In addition to the in-kind support, Ethos AgeWell West Roxbury will also have the opportunity to present at the Social Innovation Forum's annual Showcase. The event, which is modeled on a venture capital forum, gives Innovators the opportunity to pitch their organizations to an audience of funders – including business leaders, foundations, government officials, and philanthropists.

Boston, MA (December 5, 2012) – At a time when many older people in Massachusetts are struggling to pay their grocery bills, the Fiscal Cliff automatic cuts---if implemented January 2nd---would result in a loss of more than a quarter of a million meals for the elderly, according to Ethos, the Jamaica Plain-based elder services agency.

If Congress and the President fail to prevent sequestration, one of the consequences will be a $108 million cut nationally to the federal Older Americans Act (OAA), which pays for meals on wheels, legal aid, family caregivers, and senior center programs.

Ethos serves more than 2300 seniors in Boston. The organization says that based on 2012 appropriations, a total of $2.56 million in Older American Act funding will be lost in Massachusetts as a result of an automatic 8.2% cut in funding. The state currently gets $31.28 million for the OAA programs.

Dale Mitchell, the Executive director of Ethos, said sequestration will trigger the following cuts in the Commonwealth:

• $801,982 cut to Congregate Meal/Community Café sites across the state
• $377,125 cut to Meals on Wheels
• $400,595 cut to other Nutrition funding
• $673,146 cut to legal aid, senior centers & other supports
• $38,020 cut in prevention services
• $274,627 cut to Family Caregivers

The total nutrition cut of $1.579 million translates into a loss of 252,752 meals this year alone. "A sequester means seniors currently receiving home-delivered meals five days a week may be reduced to three days a week," Mitchell estimated. "Seniors will lose rides to doctor's appointments, assistance with their medications, access to home health and personal care Services."

The January 2 sequestration mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) will cut 8.2 percent from FY 2013 non-defense discretionary (NDD) funds like the Older Americans Act (OAA).

A total of $54.5 billion in NDD cuts will have to be made in FY 2013, Ethos said. "Any 'saving' from the sequester would pale in comparison to the costs resulting in premature nursing home placement for seniors," Mitchell explained. "These cuts would also place greater financial strains on family caregivers and drive higher medical costs due to elders' poorer nutrition and health, increased falls, and other avoidable crises."

OAA funding allows local agencies to provide a wide range of supportive services to seniors. On the national level, sequestration will result in:

• 1.9 million senior rides to medical appointments, grocery shopping and other primary needs will be lost.
• 290,000 older adults will no longer receive the case management that coordinates care essential to remaining at home.
• 1.2 million older adults will lose access to the homemaker services that help them with basic daily housekeeping needs such as cooking or laundry.
• Another 1.5 million people will lose personal care services such as in-home assistance with bathing, toileting and dressing.
• Three-quarters of a million individuals in adult day care programs would lose access to the health care, socialization and nutrition they rely upon.
• 75,000 seniors will lose access to OAA legal services, just as elder abuse and fraud is on the rise.

In addition, Mitchell said, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) would be reduced by $285 million, forcing 290,000 senior households to go without heating aid. Sequestration could cut off heating to 290,000 senior households.

Sequestration would cut $32 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Section 202 Housing for the Elderly, which means that 114,000 households would receive reduced unit maintenance and supportive services crucial to remaining in the community.

"When at-risk seniors don't get the help they need to remain in their homes,' Mitchell said, "the next option they face is going to a nursing home. Home care costs about one-third as much as nursing home care on average. Middle class seniors end up spending down their resources and going on Medicaid, which is paid for with federal and state dollars."

"Congress must do whatever it takes to avoid the sequester," Mitchell concluded. "An automatic and thoughtless hit to critical programs will cause real pain to seniors and families in the Baystate, and across America."

Mitchell dismissed the latest House Republican plans to delay the Medicare eligibility age and lower the Social Security COLA as just "punishing seniors for growing old." He predicted that if Republicans keep pushing these cuts to seniors, they will not have their support at the ballot box."

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We have a day for giving thanks. We have two for getting deals; Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year help create #GivingTuesday™, the giving season’s opening day.

On Tuesday November 27, 2012 charities, families, businesses and individuals are coming together to transform the way people think about, talk about and participate in the giving season.

It’s a simple idea. Find a way for your family, your community, your company or your organization to join in acts of giving. Tell everyone you can about what you are doing and why it matters.

We hope #GivingTuesday becomes a tradition in your family and that you will consider making a donation to Ethos so we can help sustain the work we do with elders and the disabled throughout Boston.