In St. Louis, a team of students aboard a well-equipped van visits senior centers, a nursing home, a church, and other sites, learning to conduct comprehensive, hourlong geriatric assessments.

The team — future doctors, social workers, psychologists, and therapists — looks for such common problems as frailty, muscle weakness, and cognitive decline. The patients they evaluate, free of charge, receive printed plans to help guide their care.

Across Oregon, community health workers have enrolled in an eight-hour online training program — with sections on Medicare and Medicaid, hospice and palliative care, and communication with patients and families — to help them work with older adults.

“We need these front-line public health workers to know how to provide age-friendly care,” said Laura By

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