Health Leadership Apprentice Program coordinator Landon A. Hackley authored the following post.
Social isolation is a major mental health issue affecting older people across the United States. David Biko is working to address it.
A recent University of Texas at Austin graduate with a degree in human ecology, Biko started his journey in spring 2018 as a member of that semester’s Health Leadership Apprentice Program cohort at Dell Medical School. Biko said he came up with the idea for a buddy program for older people when he was taking a course on family relationships and his sister started working on a project at UT Southwestern on how social factors affect cancer epidemiology.
“We talked about the social isolation effect and how it affects the health of the elderly,” Biko said. “I wanted to work between those things and see how social isolation was affecting health here [in Austin] so we could easily find a way to start fixing that problem.”
Since then, Biko has organized several events through his buddy program that pairs students with residents at Park Bend Senior Health Center to do activities together.
“The idea is that having a way for the elderly to do activities and bring people to them will make them feel more connected,” he said.
Biko took students on regular trips throughout the fall 2018 semester, since his start in May 2018, and he plans on continuing to grow the program: He organized a trip for a group of UT Dallas students to come to Austin to knit and take pictures with the Park Bend residents. He said everyone enjoyed the outing, and he is currently recruiting students to send next year.
This is just the beginning for Biko. He said his goal is “to have a strong stream of people who would be able to come and see the residents in the nursing home regularly so that they could establish a constant feeling of camaraderie and friendship with the residents.”
Biko said it can be challenging to recruit new students to the program because “we are looking for people who are into this mission and passing it on to the next generation,” and that the activities with the residents aren’t the most important part. Rather, “the biggest, most important part of it is getting to know the residents and talking to them.”
He said living in nursing homes limits older adults’ access to friends and family, and he hopes his program will alleviate the loneliness that can arise as a result.
Biko is currently working at Dell Medical School on patient outcomes management projects while compiling his applications for graduate school. He plans to get a master’s in public health and work in health policy and management.
“I hope to be working with how to make health care more efficacious and make the delivery of health care more effective,” he said.
When Biko isn’t working on improving health for others, he enjoys playing the tuba and listening to music, especially classical.
If you are interested in Biko’s program, reach out to an HLA program coordinator to learn more (Landon Hackley or Kelsey Mumford).