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Improving New Yorkers' Health: One Meal at a Time
The Visiting Nurse Service of New York is committed to bringing the very best nursing care into patients' homes. Now, with the VNSNY nutrition program, it's bringing the very best nutritional information into their homes as well by helping to get patients to adopt better eating habits and improve their health.
"Many of our patients are elderly," says Angelina Abad, the nutrition manager for the Long Term Home Health Care Program. "It's really important to make sure they are getting the right nutrition." But elderly patients may have visual impairment or other issues that make it hard to get the message across. "We have to be creative in terms of getting them educational materials," Angelina says.
VNSNY also has to be creative in reaching out to patients who may not speak English as a first language, or at all. New York is known for its diversity of cultures and foods, but Angelina says that one of her challenges is working with patients who come from so many different places. "In Queens, we have growing communities of Chinese and Russian residents, as well as people who have immigrated from the Caribbean Islands," she says. "We want to work with everybody."
So Angelina has tried to recruit staff from many different backgrounds. Today, VNSNY has a multicultural staff of 27 nutritionists who work throughout the Long Term Home Health Care Program, Acute Care, Congregate Care, and in the Children and Family Services programs. "Culturally diverse nutritionists offer different skills, ideas and viewpoints that benefit the patient, families and staff," she says. "They are able to understand the patient's culture, regional food preferences and traditions that may be in that family."
The big concerns among the patients VNSNY serves are diabetes, heart disease and obesity. Since all three health problems can be controlled with proper dietary habits, Angelina feels that her team is able to make a real difference. "There's a big challenge in getting people to change their eating habits," she says. "They've been doing things a long time and changing their eating habits cannot happen overnight."
But thanks to the dedication of her team of nutritionists, Angelina says change does happen. "We provide coordinated care," she says. "We are able to not just monitor, but improve health." She states, "nutrition intervention not only enhances the patient's quality of life but also reduces healthcare costs with fewer hospitalizations and medications."
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