Description of an agency that supports aging-in-place in your community (Calgary Alberta Canada)
- CIHI data extraction, review and interpretation
a. The objectives of this assignment are: (1) to demonstrate familiarity in using online data with respect to the health of older adults in Canada, and (2) to analyze indicators of older adults’ health and interpret in light of related data.
b. Helpful reading: Canadian Institute for Health Information. Seniors in Transition: Exploring Pathways Across the Care Continuum. Ottawa, ON: CIHI; 2017. Available at: https://www.cihi.ca/en/seniors-in-transition-exploring-pathways-across-the-care-continuum
c. To complete this assignment, you must: i. Explore and obtain graphs from the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) Seniors in Transition Web Tools at https://www.cihi.ca/en/seniors-in-transition/web-tools.
The steps to explore and obtain graphs are as follows:
- Select Compare by Health Region.
- Choose a measure in the drop-down menu under Select measure. (Hint: Just choose any of them to get the process started. You should later play around by selecting a few different measures to see what the results look like for each one before deciding on the ones you will use for the assignment). The result will default to showing you data for all regions in Canada for which CIHI has data, with the topmost (Calgary Zone) as a Highlighted region.
- Select a subset of regions of Canada to study by de-selecting all of the other regions. For example: you could leave all five of the British Columbia regions selected and de-select all other regions in the list. Then you would be seeing graphs of data for just those five BC regions.
- Under Highlighted region, select one of the possible regions from the subset you have chosen to study. For example: in BC, you could choose the Vancouver Island Health Authority.
- Under Select measure, select a new measure and see the effect on the graphs displayed. Repeat for as many measures as you like until you see some graphs you would like to think about further. For example: To continue the example from above, if the highlighted region is set to Vancouver Island Health Authority, select the measure under Demographics of % 85 years or older, and notice that this region has the highest percentage of all BC regions for this measure across all five years. Then change the selected measure to the first one under Medications, specifically % 9+ medications. Notice that there is different profile for the data in this health region for the two variables of % 85 years or older and % 9+ medications.
- Ultimately, create two sets of graphs in which you keep the Highlighted region constant, and you keep the comparison regions (i.e., subset of displayed.
ii. Use a screen capture method to copy your sets of graphs to a document. You may do any pair of graph sets other than the example described above.
d. Write a descriptive analysis of what your selected graphs depict. (maximum of 4 pages) i. Hint: Notice that the y-axis units change automatically with every change of the graphs. Sometimes the difference is very small and sometimes it is large. Pay attention to the magnitude of any changes or differences so that you do not understate or overstate their importance.
ii. If you believe that your two selected measures may be related to one another, provide a description of the hypothesized association. If one or other of your measures is showing an upward or downward trend over time in one or more region, describe whether this trend may be associated with an improvement or a deterioration in the health of seniors in that region. Speculate on whether the regional health authority may have been, or should be, developing policy to address what your graphs depict.
Sample Solution
