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Meeting of minds Informal project lets seniors who were strangers enjoy the benefits of community Tuesday, October 02, 2001 By Gary Rotstein, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Every Wednesday morning for 16 months, a group of seniors has gathered at Carnegie Library in Oakland to discuss their physical and mental health.
Polimac, 73 and Saya Feldman, 70. They're all from Oakland. That's Kathy Sward of the UPMC Health Enhancement Program leading the session. (Tony Tye, Post-Gazette)
They call themselves the guinea pigs of Dr. Bruce Rabin, an immunologist and University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine professor of psychiatry and pathology who informally wanted to see what would result from promoting social interaction among a group of strangers.
The chief finding of Rabin and his 14 subjects, who have become more like friends to him, is that this group of older adults had a keen interest in bonding to help one another.
Although it's not a scientific research project with any standard measurements, they describe diminished stress and depression from their shared time learning, laughing and meditating in the library's computer lab, or at a table within the social sciences department as college students walk by.
At a recent session, they shared reports of having developed more meaning and optimism in their lives. They credited Rabin's advice on a wide range of medical and psychological topics, and their own sense of helping one another.
Jules Feldman, 70, a retired dentist living in Oakland, said the weekly gatherings have helped him cope with recent illnesses and deaths among loved ones. He feels more fulfilled, partly from encouragement he received to begin serving in programs to provide public health dentistry for low-income individuals.
"The concept of optimism and concept of making something positive, which is what we've been talking about, has been very important to me in getting through the past year," said Feldman, whose wife, Saya, also attends.
None of this is a surprise to Rabin, whose research career has focused on the link between stress reductions and better physical health, by virtue of the impact stress has on the immune system. His most recent research project, not yet published, examined how rats with companions present appeared to react better to stressful situations than did rats left alone.
"We've learned from the library the importance of bonding with other people in a group," Rabin said. "You become stronger at promoting health behaviors."
Sheldon Cohen, a Carnegie Mellon University psychology professor who has collaborated on research with Rabin, said multiple epidemiological studies of the elderly have demonstrated connections between health and social relationships.
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"People with diverse social networks live longer, have less heart disease, are less susceptible to infectious agents like colds and viruses," Cohen said.
Rabin is taking some of his experiences with the library group, which continues to meet, and putting them into practice as medical director of the new UPMC Health Enhancement Program. The 19 UPMC medical institutions, plus smaller community facilities, will have a coordinated program to promote smoking cessation, stress reduction, weight management and other healthful goals through group courses.
But so far, there are no plans to duplicate the library group by assembling other groups of strangers who lack any specific health issue in common.
Herb Elish, director of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, helped Rabin get the group started by providing him a basic library mailing list in early 2000, and he admires the progress since then. But he is concerned that much of the success might be directly attributable to the professor's dynamism and breadth of knowledge across health issues.
"I would like to be able to do something similar [in other library branches] but it depends on finding somebody like him, and that's not easy," Elish said. Rabin also has received no compensation for his work with the group.
Still, the seniors say they feel compelled themselves to be more active and share their newfound optimism with others in the community. Several are using sharpened or newly developed computer skills to help other senior citizens who are newcomers to the technology at the library.
"I think we're sort of emissaries of Dr. Rabin's, to go out into the community and practice some of the things he's put into our minds," said Ruth Feldman, 78, of Oakland, no relation to Jules and Saya.
The irony is that Rabin's informal project has not reached the people he was most interested in at the beginning. He started by sending letters to elderly individuals living near the library to tell them about a new group, hoping to draw out lonely, isolated individuals who might benefit most.
Instead, he attracted people who were already active, just curious to find more meaning in life.
"There are a lot of people sitting at home that could benefit from social interaction who will not seek it out, either because they're too shy or insecure or don't grasp the importance of being with others," Rabin said.
He hopes the new UPMC programs, targeted at bringing individuals with specific health problems into group settings, will help reach those who may be isolated now.
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