Healthy People 2010, the nation's prevention agenda, challenges us to take action to secure better health for all Americans.

To prevent and manage secondary conditions, adults with developmental disabilities, and those who serve them, need health-promotion interventions that have been designed, tested, and disseminated.

Such interventions should organize the support environment, limit reliance on staff, fit seamlessly into existing service provider operations, and be relatively easy to implement and manage.  The ideal intervention should be flexible, allow the framing of action steps related to any of the 467 HP 2010 objectives, and should anticipate the emergence of new Olmstead-driven service models.

We designed the Wellness Club as a system for planning, implementing, and evaluating these action steps for Americans with developmental disabilities. It is a model system for organizing resources and supports that prevent and manage secondary conditions by building and maintaining healthy lifestyles. It embeds wellness education and management of secondary conditions into a model of individual services based on principles and procedures of choice and applied behavior analysis. The Wellness Club consists of:

• General wellness education and materials for providers and consumers,
• Global assessments for individual planning,
• Specific functional assessments for individual treatment plan design,
• Standard mechanisms for prompting and reinforcing healthy life-style behavior,
• Self-monitoring, and
• Evaluation procedures.

We are targeting several of the Leading Health Indicators (physical activity, healthy eating, oral hygiene, and personal care activities). The pilot project was in effect from September 2004 through March 2005. The research project was initiated in July 2005 and continued through July 2006. The University of Montana Rural Institute collaborated with the University of Kansas in this multi-state project.

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For more information contact:

Donna B. Bainbridge, PT, EdD, ATC, Project Director
406/243-5741
email Donna Bainbridge

Questions? Would you like to receive periodic updates about our research and training activities? Do you have comments or suggestions about this site? E-mail your requests, comments and suggestions to Diana Spas or call 888-268-2743 and ask for the Information Coordinator.