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Jeffrey Robbins, LICSW, knows firsthand how patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease benefit from interaction with young people. After his mother passed away several years ago from the disease, he, along with Eileen Salmanson, LICSW, founded the Eleanor Robbins program in her name which matched high school students with Alzheimer’s patients at local nursing homes.
Today, Robbins, a senior clinical social worker in BWH’s Behavioral Neurology Group and teaching associate at Harvard Medical School (HMS), is helping Harvard University to expand on his program with pre-med students. He recently teamed up with Ryan Christ, a Harvard pre-med student, to jump start the Alzheimer’s Buddies program, a collaboration between Harvard University and Hebrew Senior Life.
“I’ve seen the impact it has on the nursing home residents and how much joy it brings to them having one-on-one interactions,” said Robbins. “Our hope is that the Buddies program will one day become a model for colleges and universities around the country.”
Robbins supervises the 25 pre-med students participating in the program, which began earlier this year. The students visited the nursing home once a week and participated in an array of activities from playing board games, to reading to the residents, to just spending time talking and listening.
“It’s not just the smiling faces that tell how much the students’ visits mean to Alzheimer’s patients,” said Robbins. “We’re starting to gather data on how the visits impact patients by having nursing home personnel visually assess patients’ behavior and signs of depression before and after the visit.”
For Robbins, having the opportunity to build on the success of the program he founded years ago has been a great opportunity.
“We deeply appreciate the benefit for the nursing home residents, but students also benefit from it because they learn firsthand about Alzheimer’s. They also build relationships with the residents that they will treasure for years to come,” Robbins said.