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Welcome to the December 2019 issue of the MassMobility newsletter.  This month's issue highlights a new effort to train transportation providers to better assist passengers living with dementia, an employment support program that has begun offering a transportation benefit for participants, and more news about transportation for  older adults, people with disabilities, and low-income individuals in Massachusetts - including a  feature on the colleges and universities that have incorporated community transportation topics into their curricula or extracurricular offerings this semester.

The newsletter is compiled by  MassMobility , an initiative of the  Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services .
Community Transit Grants announced
MassDOT has announced the organizations funded under this year's Community Transit Grant Program, which provides funding for vehicles, operating funds, and mobility management projects to enhance mobility for older adults and people with disabilities.
BRTA partners with Alzheimer's Association on dementia training
The Alzheimer's Association of Massachusetts and New Hampshire recently developed a training on dementia targeted to the transportation sector, and piloted it with the Berkshire Regional Transit Authority (BRTA) on November 5. Ten BRTA staff from both the public transit and human service call centers attended. Meghan Lemay, Regional Manager for Western Massachusetts at the Alzheimer's Association, conducted the training. A former bus driver herself, Lemay drew on her own understanding of the needs of transit riders.
 
The training is powerpoint-based and lasts one hour. It has three components: a general overview of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a discussion of how dementia impacts communication and behavior, and examples of behaviors that might emerge in a transportation setting. While the core content is based on other modules previously developed by the Alzheimer's Association, this training is infused with transportation-specific examples and scenarios.
 
"This training is part of our mission of making all spaces more welcoming and inclusive for people with dementia - which then also makes them more accessible for everyone," shares Lemay. BRTA Deputy Administrator Sarah Vallieres worked with Lemay to arrange the session. "We provided the training because customer service is so important for call center staff. If we can understand and communicate appropriately to all of our customers and have the best customer service response, this benefits both the customer and staff," explains Vallieres.
 
The Alzheimer's Association is interested in offering the training to additional transit authorities and is partnering with Dementia Friendly Massachusetts on outreach. Transit authorities can also request a training directly (make sure to indicate that you are interested in the transportation training). In addition to this transportation-oriented training, general sessions are also available. For example, in September, the Human Service Transportation Office hosted Dementia Friends Massachusetts at a quarterly meeting to offer a general training on dementia to office staff and brokers.
Employment support program for low-income jobseekers adds transportation benefit
Transportation benefits are now available to help SNAP Path to Work participants pay for the transportation they need to access education and employment opportunities. SNAP Path to Work is a Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) program available to individuals who receive SNAP but do not receive any other DTA benefits. Previously, SNAP Path to Work participants received education services, skills training, job search, and job training services, but no supportive services to help pay for transportation to access education or training. Thanks to funding that DTA received in the state budget, participants who need transportation assistance can now access between $90 and $140 per month to pay for public transit, taxis, on-demand services, or other transportation options.
 
DTA implements SNAP Path to Work through provider agencies and  recently expanded to also partner with MassHire Career Centers. Eligible individuals can sign up through a provider agency, at a  MassHire Career Center, or by calling (888) 483-0255 to speak to a DTA SNAP Path to Work Specialist. As part of enrollment into the education and training services, participants can also sign up for the transportation benefit. The monthly amount varies by county and is delivered directly onto the participant's EBT card, where they can access it at an ATM.
College students explore community transportation challenges and opportunities
From Springfield to Dorchester, colleges and universities engaged students in studying community transportation challenges and solutions this semester. Approaches varied widely from one campus to the next and included a course in its eighth year at UMass Boston targeted to current and future aging service providers, a program in its second year introducing medical students to the role of transportation in rural health, and three new initiatives to get students involved in designing creative solutions to persistent transportation challenges.

UMass Boston
Since 2012, Professors Nina Silverstein and Helen Kerschner have co-taught " Introduction to Senior Transportation," an online course that addresses the challenges older adults face in getting to and from needed and desired destinations, reviews existing and emerging strategies to address those challenges, and encourages an expanded vision of the integral role of transportation in supporting healthy aging. The Beverly Foundation Legacy Fund provided funding to support the initial development of the course, as well as scholarships for over 30 students. First offered to gerontology graduate students, the course expanded in 2014 to also include professionals in aging services and transportation - providing the graduate students and professionals the opportunity to learn from each other as well as from the professors. In total, 125 students have taken the course to date, including professionals representing small non-profits serving rural areas.
 
"Our goal is to make a difference in the quality of lives of older people, their families, and their communities," explains Silverstein. "We believe that increasing the availability, accessibility, affordability, adaptability, and acceptability of supportive, age-friendly transportation options will contribute greatly toward achieving that goal. Each student represents a community, an agency, and/or a career path that has the potential to effect change by bringing awareness to the need and offering strategies to improve existing options or creating new ones where gaps exist. We are providing the tools to get the conversation going."
 
"The course provided the opportunity to further explore the unique considerations for designing senior-friendly transportation," shares Jenna Henning, who took the course this semester. "The knowledge of the instructors, guest lecturers, and my fellow classmates helped foster a keen understanding of the real-world challenges facing older adults and transportation service operators."

Silverstein and Kerschner plan to offer the course again in the Fall 2020 semester. They have also published a textbook that includes many of the course materials.

UMass Medical School's Baystate Springfield campus
For two weeks in late October, four second-year medical students in the  Population-Based Urban and Rural Community Health (PURCH) program at UMass Medical School's (UMMS) Baystate Springfield campus learned firsthand from medical professionals, social service providers, drivers, and riders about the role transportation plays in rural health. This was the second year that Baystate offered two-week clerkships on the social determinants of health to second-year medical students, in order to help the students understand that health is more than healthcare, and that doctors are not only part of a clinical team but also a community team.
 
The Quaboag Valley Community Development Corporation (QVCDC) again partnered with UMMS/Baystate to offer a rural transportation clerkship featuring the  Quaboag Connector. This year's program was similar to last year's - with an added emphasis on advocacy. Participants met with the region's legislative delegation to learn about rural transportation issues and proposed legislation currently on the docket and hear about anticipated benefits and challenges, and also met with representatives of MassDOT and the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative to learn about implementation processes and opportunities for ongoing advocacy after legislation passes.
 
"This experience complements their biomedical learning," explains Dr. Sarah McAdoo, Population Health Capstone Director at PURCH. "They can begin to understand that the resources go beyond their healthcare institution - the resources are in the community. They can always look up a disease in a medical journal or reference book, but nobody writes a book about community transportation resources - but if we educate the students early, they will always think about this during their practice as they try to address patient needs."
 
Looking ahead, PURCH plans to continue expanding the clerkship through broadening availability to additional disciplines, partnering with additional organizations to address pressing current issues, and further expanding the advocacy component. McAdoo is also developing a Health Equity Incubator to build on and continue this work throughout the year.

Babson
In spring 2019, Babson College partnered with the Toyota Mobility Foundation to launch the FutureLab on Mobility, which offered its first course this semester. Three teams of MBA students participated in a semester-long process using design thinking, social design principles, and Babson's entrepreneurial thought and action approach in order to explore challenges of inclusive, multi-generational mobility. Seeking to align with the recommendations of the Governor's Council to Address Aging in Massachusetts, two teams of students worked with the Executive Office of Elder Affairs (EOEA), and one team worked with the MBTA RIDE. While this semester's "Mobility Opportunities" course focused on exploring and understanding the underlying issues, students who enroll in the follow-up "FutureLab: Mobility Innovation" course next semester will build on this semester's insights to develop, prototype, and test solutions.
 
Design thinking is a human-centered design approach to complex problem solving that centers the needs and preferences of the end user. Early in the semester, students took field trips to senior centers, shopping centers, hospitals, and other destinations to observe and interview older adults. They synthesized numerous interviews and observations into a few personas, analyzed their personas' journeys, and created stakeholder analyses to understand their individual ecosystems. The teams partnering with EOEA chose to focus on older adults who drive but will soon need to transition away from driving, but who have not yet made a plan. They identified human relationships as key to any successful solution. The RIDE team chose to focus on challenges that arise for people seeking to arrive at and return from hospitals and health care appointments, and sought to understand what would be required to create a more customer-centric experience.
 
"The students really listened to older adults as part of this process and generated insights that are valuable to all the stakeholders in the room. They have put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and hours into this work, and it really shows," says Kathryn Downes, EOEA Policy Director. "Watching them deeply explore these issues this semester has been inspiring, and I look forward to working with them next semester on solutions."

Boston University
For the 2019-2020 school year, Boston University's Innovate@BU has partnered with the Massachusetts Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired (MABVI) on a  community transportation challenge. The challenge invites current students and alumni university-wide to form teams to develop user-informed innovations that address the transportation challenges of older adults who are blind or have low vision.
 
Innovate@BU and MABVI launched the challenge in October, inviting teams to submit an application. Eleven teams applied, of which judges selected eight to advance to Round 1. These eight include ideas such as redesigning priority seating, improving bus stop accessibility, or offering audio cues to help people with visual impairments navigate transit. Each of the eight teams has received $500 to further develop their idea. Round 1 concepts are due in January, when three or four teams will be selected to advance to Round 2, where they will work with expert mentors to advance their concepts. In April, a winning team will receive a $10,000 prize and a chance to pilots its solution.
 
The initiative emphasizes an inclusive planning process: incorporating input from users is a core priority. "While my focus remains on developing innovative new tools, my bigger focus is on developing new and leading innovators," explains Sassy Outwater-Wright, Executive Director of MABVI. "That is our greatest tool for change - people who learn to think, design, and respond with inclusion at the forefront of what they do and how they do it."

WooHealth Hackathon
In Worcester, a " WooHealth Hackathon" brought students from eight area colleges and universities together November 15-16 to learn about transportation barriers to health and develop innovative solutions to facilitate access to care. The Hackathon began on Friday evening with introductory-level workshops on key topics from subject matter experts, including individuals who directly experience transportation barriers to care. Students reconvened Saturday morning and formed teams, working through lunch and into the afternoon, when each team presented its ideas. Recommendations ranged from engaging faith-based communities to sponsor wheelchair-accessible rides, to developing regional hubs that would gradually introduce telemedicine, to using technology to improve public engagement. In total, 65 students participated, with additional participation from faculty and community members.
 
Worcester's Division of Public Health co-hosted the hackathon with the UMass Medical School's Interprofessional Center for Experiential Learning and Simulation ( iCELS). The City was interested because transportation barriers emerged as a priority need area in the most recent Community Health Assessment. At the same time, iCELS was looking to involve more students in simulation in order to offer students opportunities for real-life problem solving and community engagement. Together, they came up with the idea to host a hackathon with a public health focus. "We wanted to bring people with diverse interests and skills together to focus for a short time on a single problem," explains Kelsey Hopkins, who coordinates the Academic Health Collaborative for the City of Worcester. "The more voices we have at the table, the more creative and successful we're going to be at solving these problems," adds Dr. Melissa Fischer, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education, Curriculum Innovation & iCELS at UMass. Hopkins and Fischer have received seed funding from sponsors to move some of the most promising ideas from this year's hackathon forward. Given this year's success, they expect that the hackathon will become an annual event.

Other approaches
If you know of any additional examples of colleges or universities involving students in studying community transportation, please let us know so we can feature them in a future issue.
Belmont launches volunteer driver program
In response to increasing demand for transportation, the Belmont Council on Aging (COA) launched a new volunteer driver program on November 1. In the first month, the program provided 66 rides, dramatically surpassing the COA's expectations. To date, volunteers have driven older adults to a range of destinations, including regular trips transporting two older adults to their jobs.
 
Board member Ellen Sullivan worked closely with the COA's Transportation Coordinator, Marty Cloherty, to develop the program. They adapted many of the policies and procedures the Wellesley COA uses for its volunteer driver program. Older adults looking for a ride call the Belmont Council on Aging, where Cloherty determines whether the ride is better served by a COA van or by a volunteer. Cloherty enters trip requests for volunteers into RideScheduler, an online system that allows volunteers to log in and sign up for trips directly. Volunteers can choose how often to drive and which trips to accept.
 
The Friends of the Belmont COA paid for a town-wide postcard mailing to recruit volunteers, which yielded 10 volunteers. Belmont runs background checks on the volunteers and has them fill out an application, sign a waiver, and review a handbook before they begin driving.
CrossTown Connect celebrates five years as a TMA
CrossTown Connect (CTC) formally marked five years as a municipally-led Transportation Management Association (TMA) with a lunchtime awards ceremony in Westford on November 22. While the group has been working together for over a decade, they incorporated as a TMA in 2014. CTC Executive Director Scott Zadakis opened the event with an overview of the organization's accomplishments, including centralizing dispatch for area Councils on Aging (COAs), sharing COA vehicles across town lines, launching new fixed-route and employee shuttle services, and demonstrating how a public-private partnership can help residents and companies meet local transportation needs.
 
Zadakis then transitioned into master of ceremonies, recognizing 10 stakeholders with awards and nearly 20 more with certificates of appreciation. Those recognized included members of the state legislative delegation, in particular Senator Jamie Eldridge and Representative Kate Hogan; partnering Regional Transit Authority Administrators Mo Khan (in absentia) and Jim Scanlan; founding members Doug Halley (in absentia) and Franny Osman; corporate member and host of the gathering, Brian Walsh of Juniper Networks; and long-time supporters Jessica Strunken (formerly of the 495/MetroWest Corridor Partnership), Aniko Laszlo of the MBTA/MassDOT, and Rachel Fichtenbaum of MassMobility. Additional partners and supporters received certificates, including some of the frontline staff whose work powers CTC's operations, such as Dispatcher Nancy Yeo, Acton Crew Chief Bob Draper, Maynard Shuttle Coordinator Mark Koenig, and Maynard driver Jeanie Parker. In addition to each receiving an award from CTC, Franny Osman and Doug Halley both also received official citations from the House of Representatives. CrossTown Connect as an organization also received a House citation.
 
Upon receiving his award, Senator Jamie Eldridge highlighted the entire legislative delegation's support for CrossTown Connect: "I'm pleased to have been a strong partner to support CrossTown Connect providing the level of shuttle services it does now to my constituents, including in Acton, Littleton, Maynard, and Sudbury. The legislative delegation has worked closely to secure Community Challenge grants, pass legislation to allow train station revenue to invest in transit services, and secure earmarks to maintain the CrossTown Connect services, which provide critical transportation services to commuters, seniors, and people with disabilities," said Senator Eldridge.
 
Congratulations to CrossTown Connect on an impressive five years! We look forward to seeing what you accomplish in the next five.
Foundations partner to promote age-friendly transportation
In partnership with the Tufts Health Plan Foundation, the Barr Foundation invited its mobility grantees to "Better with Age," an afternoon forum in Boston on November 19. " Our goal was to introduce our grantees to the mobility needs of older adults, so that they can integrate these important perspectives into their work," explains Lisa Jacobson, Senior Program Officer for Mobility at the Barr Foundation. "At the Barr Foundation, we believe that it's our move to transform our transportation system into something that works for everyone - and that includes older adults, as well as commuters and youth."
 
The forum began with an inspiring keynote in which Gil Penalosa, founder of 8-80 Cities, described how planning a city around the needs of an 80-year-old and an eight-year-old creates a city that works well for all residents. A panel discussion followed, featuring Robin Lipson of the Executive Office of Elder Affairs discussing how Massachusetts is becoming an age-friendly state and highlighting the transportation components of the Governor's Council to Address Aging in Massachusetts; John Ratliff of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council discussing their advocacy on behalf of low-income seniors; Dr. Beth Dugan of the UMass Boston Department of Gerontology highlighting relevant demographic trends; Rich Parr of MassInc Polling sharing data on older adults' responses to questions about transportation policy; and Nora Moreno Cargie of the Tufts Health Plan Foundation discussing the unique role that philanthropists can play as risk takers who partner with government to drive progress.
 
After the panel, attendees shared their thoughts in an open discussion. One grantee was inspired to include benches and respite areas along a bike path his company is designing - recognizing that the path could benefit not only long-distance bicyclists, but also older adults and others who might want a stroll or a nice place to sit.
Give the gift of transportation
Looking for last-minute gift ideas, or hoping to make an end-of-year donation? Check out these mobility-oriented gift options from our December 2017 newsletter.
Professional development opportunity
The National Transit Institute is offering a course on  Advancing Mobility Management  in various locations around the country, including  Springfield, MA  on March 25 and 26. This two-day course is targeted to staff of transit agencies, regional planners, recipients of Community Transit Grants, and others who have worked in  mobility management  for between one and five years.  Transit authorities and government agencies can send staff for free; otherwise, the cost is $300 per participant.
Job posting
Transportation for Massachusetts is hiring a policy director.
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