October 15, 2019 —Kendal at Hanover is the first Kendal retirement community to adopt Vitalize 360, a program designed to empower residents to accomplish their personal life goals.
Vitalize 360 is a coaching and assessment process that uses art and science to promote optimal wellness for successful aging. The program combines an award-winning, innovative, person-directed approach to wellness coaching with the power of information derived from a scientifically-grounded assessment system. A joint venture between two not-for-profits—Kendal Outreach, LLC, a subsidiary of Kendal, a system of communities and services for older adults and Hebrew SeniorLife, a non-profit affiliated with Harvard Medical School—its mission is to engage, challenge and inspire older adults to live a full, healthy, vibrant life and enable communities to demonstrate appreciable improvement in successful aging.
More than 45 staff members from Kendal communities in eight states gathered in mid-September at Orchard Cove, a Hebrew SeniorLife community in suburban Boston, to acquire the skills they will need to become Vitalize 360 wellness coaches in preparation for rolling out the program across the Kendal System over the next year. In 2009, Orchard Cove developed and launched Vitality 360, a coaching program using COLLAGE’s computer-based assessment tools. COLLAGE, The Art & Science of Healthy Aging®, was created in 2005 as a joint venture between Kendal Outreach and the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife. Orchard Cove has been a COLLAGE member since 2007.
Over the course of three years, Orchard Cove refined Vitality 360 and achieved remarkable results, including:
- 90% of residents participated in the program;
- 85% of the participants developed a fitness plan;
- Of those residents participating, 80% exercise on a regular basis (more than twice a week);
- 89% of the residents participating reported having good or excellent health — up from 80% one year earlier; and
- 62% of participating residents said they are delighted with life as a whole — up from 32% one year earlier.
These impressive results encouraged the further collaboration of Kendal Outreach and Orchard Cove to create the current iteration of Vitalize 360. Now, Orchard Cove and Kendal at Hanover are leading the way in implementing Vitalize 360 nationwide. The program empowers older adults to take a proactive, preventive approach, helping them to set and accomplish personal life goals. It embraces the entire well-being of a person — the 360 degree view — and encourages adults to consider all aspects of their lives including sense of purpose, lifelong learning, social connections, community activity, mental and physical fitness, nutrition and health.
“Our mission is to engage, challenge and inspire older adults to live a full, healthy, vibrant lives and to enable communities to demonstrate appreciable improvement in successful aging,” says Neil Beresin, National Program Manager.
Vitalize 360 focuses on five themes:
- The use of personalized Vitality Plans that help residents to live life to the fullest;
- The training and development of effective wellness coaches;
- The critical role of the interdisciplinary team in supporting the older adult and the wellness coach;
- Integration of Vitalize 360 with annual Medicare wellness visits; and
- Real time outcome data to be used by the older adults, wellness coaches, and staff as they work together to determine effective use of resources.
To learn more about Vitalize 360, visit discovervitalize360.org.