News, Events & Updates
From The Green House Project
IN THIS ISSUE
  • Think Tank Invites Green House to Publish 'Idea for Action'
  • A Story from the Frontlines: Elders Make Visits to New Cottages
  • Green House Development News: Washington and Wyoming
  • DementiaVerse Registration Opens
  • Green House in the News
  • New Green House Workshop Open for Registration
  • Elevate Eldercare Highlights Jennie Chin Hansen
  • Welcome to the Green House Summer Interns
Think Tank Invites Green House to Publish Small House 'Idea for Action'
"Small Houses" is the title of the chapter authored by The Green House Project (GHP) Senior Director Susan Ryan in a report published recently by the Convergence Center, a non-profit organization focused on solving social challenges through collaboration.

Ryan was asked to submit an "idea for action" that improves care, housing, and services for older adults for an initiative known as "Rethinking Care for Older Adults." Convergence Board Member Stuart Butler, who recognized that the current U.S. long-term care system needs much more than a facelift, invited Ryan and other "experts on aging and caregiving for older adults" to submit ideas.

The ideas published in the report are based on a series of earlier brainstorming conversations on aging and caregiving for older adults, which generated ideas for expanding opportunities for home and community-based care, advancing alternative business models in the institutional sector, and transforming the caregiving workforce.

Ryan's chapter, which she co-authored with Altarum's Anne Montgomery, is on page 36 of the report.

Green House Elders Go All Out for Visits to
Neighboring Cottages
Since most nursing homes in Arkansas have opened to visitors, elders living at the Green House Cottages of Homewood, in Mena, Ark., have begun dressing up to visit friends who live in the community's neighboring cottages.

The elders at Homewood, which recently opened nine Green House homes to replace their traditional nursing home, expressed how they missed seeing some of their friends who now lived in different homes. Vicki Hughes, long time administrator of the nursing home, let them know that there is nothing stopping them from visiting those friends.

Seeing this as an opportunity to honor the Green House core values of real home and meaningful life, Vicki and her staff encouraged elders to visit their neighbors. Elders visiting their friends in other Green House cottages has now become a normal part of the community activities. One elder, with the help of staff, makes her favorite banana muffins to give as a gift to her neighbors.

Each home now takes turns hosting “competition day” where elders play checkers, UNO, and other games. Elders have become the authors of their day-to-day lives in exciting ways not possible in the traditional nursing home.

​Vicki, who has been on the culture change journey for many years, stated: “I didn’t realize the possibilities of these cottages. Never in my life did I dream it could happen this way!"
Green House Development News






The Mustard Seed Project
GHP is excited to announce the development of three assisted living Green House homes in Vaughn, Wash., located on Vaughn Bay in the northwestern Key Peninsula, approximately one hour southwest of Seattle.

The Mustard Seed Project of Key Peninsula is a grassroots effort and the team has been working for years to see this project come to fruition.

The Green House team congratulates them on their progress and are pleased to help guide them on this journey.

Wyoming Life Resource Center
The Wyoming Life Resource Center (WLRC) in Lander, Wyo., is a state-owned community that has long served the needs of the Wyoming population and is being rebuilt as the first Green House home to be established as an Intermediate Care Facility for people with intellectual disabilities.

Construction began on WLRC in 2018. Once completed, WLRC will host a total of 100 beds in 10 cottages, all built using the Green House model.

Read more about how WLRC came to be and the people behind its transformation at our blog here: http://blog.thegreenhouseproject.org/green-house-in-wyoming-a-story-of-firsts/
DementiaVerse Explores the Universe of Leading Edge Research, Treatment, and Prevention of Dementia
Registration is now open for the dementia care event of the year. Designed to take place both virtually and in person, "DementiaVerse: A New Frontier in Learning, Collaboration, and Scholarship" will explore dementia care and its relationship to nature, the built environment, nutrition, and the power of socially integrated communities.

The in-person portion of DementiaVerse will take place at Serenbe, a biophilic community that connects people to nature and each other, located in Chattahoochee Hills, Ga.

This unique and innovative event will examine biophilic design, epigenetics, and the Human Genome Project through the lens of dementia care.
Green House in the News
The Green House model continues to attract worldwide media attention, with more than five dozen positive press hits in prominent national, international, and local outlets since April 2020.

Below are highlights of our recent coverage:
McKnight's Long-Term Care News
"A person’s mindset plays a big role in her development as a leader, added Green House Project Senior Director Susan Ryan. "As a leader myself, I have wanted to extend belief in a person,” she said. “It really is creating the intention, believing that we deserve a seat at the table and that we’re going to do the preparation and the equipping to support each other to be successful.'"

Current
“The elders are happier in this atmosphere,” stated Rhonda Hall, registered nurse at Green House Cottages. “What you’re doing is observing them on a more personal level and interacting with them more. You can see the changes more readily. This is as much of a home atmosphere as we can attain while being (in) a medical setting.”

McKnight's Long-Term Care News
Mor says the key to quality care for long-term care residents who need social support more than medical intervention may be in private rooms and smaller, Green House-style facilities. Their small residential groupings and staff assignments were associated with lower COVID-19 risk.

Boston Globe
Clearly, 2Life Communities, Carehaus, and the Green House Project are implementing visionary ideas about how we can live full lives as we age, enriched by neighbors, programs, and activities, and by supportive medical personnel as needed.
AARP: Moving on from COVID-19 in Long-Term Care

COVID-19 spoke to us about an issue long overdue for attention, and it is now time to heed its message. That issue is long-term care. To be sure, the pandemic has changed the way we think of long-term care, and if we lean into the crisis-earned...

Read more
blog.aarp.org
New Workshop Examines Green House Core Values in Traditional Settings
Join us on Aug. 17, for a workshop that unpacks the application of the Green House principles and core values in traditional nursing home settings.

Speakers and presentations during this five-hour event will unlock the potential for providers to transform and disrupt the senior housing market.

Green House 2.0 adopters will examine providers' own experiences in creating relationship-rich, person-directed living settings without having to rebuild or undergo major renovations.

Testimonials will reveal the ROI in applying the model's core values within their own communities and explore their experiences becoming part of a network of peers with many years of experience and thought leadership. 
Fifty Years of Eldercare Innovation
In this week's episode of Elevate Eldercare, Susan Ryan sits down with Jennie Chin Hansen, founder of Program for All-Inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE) and chair of the AARP Foundation Board of Trustees.

In the mid-1980s, Hansen decided to move her ailing parents from Boston to her home in San Francisco so that they could live out their remaining years surrounded by family – and not in an institutional nursing home.
 
Hansen’s care journey for her father, who had suffered several strokes, was a continuation of the work she’d already done with On Lok, an innovative community program in San Francisco’s Chinatown that offered comprehensive outpatient services. Through On Lok, Hansen’s father, Wing Chin, was able to receive the high-level care he needed while still returning home each night to share a bed with his wife.
 
Hansen went on to become the CEO of On Lok, and thanks to her tireless efforts, the model has been replicated in 250 programs across 31 states under the federal Program for All-inclusive Care for the Elderly, known as PACE.
 
And PACE is only one small part of Hansen’s career, which has included stints as the president of AARP and a stakeholder in the state of California’s first-ever Master Plan on Aging.

Ryan and Hansen discuss that ambitious master plan, as well as her deeply personal history with On Lok – which is informed by her interest in the connections between aging and cultural identity. Hansen also explores how she sees PACE, which fills a unique middle ground between home care and communal eldercare settings, fitting into the post-COVID aging services landscape.
Welcome Green House Interns!

We are very excited to have three interns working with our Green House team this summer. Each intern brings a different and complimentary skillset to their work.

Top Left: Meghna Datta, Duke University
Top Right: Carly Sines, James Madison University
Bottom: Ella Lawson, University of Mississippi
The Green House Project