“Shima (my mother) needs roofing repairs,” Kirby Smith says one morning while visiting Jolene Peralta and other elders at the senior center recently.
Smith is one of three community health representatives (CHR’s) providing health services to about 1,500 tribal members in the Navajo community of To’hajiilee, located about 30 miles west of Albuquerque. It’s customary for community members and health professionals like Smith to address elders by their familial roles, like shim1 (my mother), shizhe’4 (my dad) or shicheii (my grandpa).
Focus on the Person, Not Disease
“Even when they are chronically ill, people define their lives by the function they retain, not the function they lost. They define themselves by their communities, their relationships and their values,” said Bruce Chernof, MD, at the recent annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, (GSA), in Washington, D.C.
Chernof, president and CEO of The SCAN Foundation, added that identifying the person by their role in the community rather than the medical model of labeling a patient by their disease or illness (like “he’s a diabetic) helps the elder maintain their function in the community.
[For more of this story, written by Navajo Times/New America Media, go to http://newamericamedia.org/201...get-human-factor.php]
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