Age-Friendly Health Systems Guide for Older Adults and Caregivers: My Health Checklist
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has released My Health Checklist, an Age-Friendly Health Systems guide for older adults and caregivers. The guide has been updated and is also available in Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish, and as an audio version.
My Health Checklist is a workbook to support people 65 and older in preparing for health care appointments. It can be downloaded and completed on the computer or printed as physical copies.
This new guide helps older adults think through all aspects of their health — what’s going well, what could be better, and their questions or concerns. Then it helps each person prioritize their top questions about what matters most to them with the aim of supporting more efficient, effective, and productive medical appointment conversations. The guide is now available in Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish. An audio version has also been released.
The Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) has developed free, ready-to-use education videos to promote use of My Health Checklist and support more meaningful, person-centered conversations between older adults, caregivers and care teams:
- Waiting room video (HANYS) – intended to be shown in waiting rooms and other public-facing areas to introduce the My Health Checklist and encourage patient engagement.
- Social media video (HANYS) – designed to promote awareness of the My Health Checklist on social media.
- Implementation guidance (HANYS) – provides practical guidance for deploying the checklist and videos across care settings.
This tool was produced as part of the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement, an initiative of JAHF and IHI, in partnership with the American Hospital Association and the Catholic Health Association of the U.S. Older adults and family caregivers can find more resources to help them ask for and receive age-friendly care at johnahartford.org/agefriendly.
The checklist was featured in the recent WebMD article, "The 4Ms of Age-Friendly Care: A Checklist for Better Health as You Get Older."
Learn more about the guide.
Go to the guide PDF.
Listen to the audio version of the guide.
Go to HANYS implementation guidance on using the videos.
Learn more about the Age-Friendly Health Systems (AFHS) initiative.
Learn more about JAHF's co-funding of the AFHS initiative.
