The socio-ecological model is a highly adaptable framework which can be used by health professionals to identify and deal with health issues, particularly due to its capacity to reveal the diverse yet interrelated issues affecting human behavior across the five levels of the model – individual, interpersonal, organizational, community/environment, and society/public policy (Pearson, Vaughan, Vaughan, & FitzGerald, 2005). This means that interventions can be directed at individual levels to achieve optimal outcomes. The proposed intervention discussed in this section is based on the society/public policy level of the model.
It is already known that social exclusion is a social determinant of health that has continued to work individually and corroboratively to exacerbate the problem of excessive alcohol consumption among older adults (Briggs, Magnus, Lassiter, Patterson, & Smith, 2011). Consequently, it is important for the federal government to develop and implement legislation aimed at not only providing adequate information and education to the aged, but also assisting them to form and maintain social network groups.
The legislation should be targeted at providing funds for federal and state health agencies to operate media campaigns on how to deal with factors mentioned in the lower levels of the socio-ecological model. For example, these media campaigns should provide rich contextual information on how to cope with retirement, how to remain physically fit, how to deal with the death of a spouse, and how to maintain social relationships using already existing community networks.
Media campaigns targeting the elderly must be established in a way that demonstrates the multiple levels of influence of the various factors related to social exclusion (Pearson et al., 2005). For instance, the federal government can involve health professionals in designing pamphlets that educate the elderly on the causes of excessive alcohol consumption by linking an individual-level factor such as attaining retirement age to an interpersonal-level factor such as family dissonance, and then linking the effects of the two factors to an organizational-level factor such as loss of social and emotional support systems.
It is also important to include information on how alcohol consumption is related to the dynamics of ethnicity, race, and socioeconomic status. Information on how the minorities are most likely to die from alcohol and drug-related deaths should be availed to the elderly through targeted media campaigns.
Indeed, social exclusion is related to ethnicity and socioeconomic status, as suggested by findings that poor Black Americans and Latinos suffer more social exclusion than Whites (Briggs et al., 2011). Media campaigns should also provide direction to the elderly on “how” and “where” to access mental health services on a needs-based approach.
Overall, it is believed that targeting the elderly at the society/public policy level using extensive media campaigns will go a long way in addressing the issues and factors raised in the other levels of the socio-ecological model, hence effectively dealing with the health issue of alcohol consumption among the elderly.
References
Briggs, W.P., Magnus, V.A., Lassiter, P., Patterson, A., & Smith, L. (2011). Substance use, misuse, and abuse among older adults: Implications for clinical mental health counselors. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 33(2), 112-127.
Pearson, A., Vaughan, B., Vaughan, B., & FitzGerald, M. (2005). Nursing models for practice (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: Elsevier Health Sciences.