Practical considerations for maintaining independence among individuals with functional impairment.

Social workers, gerontologists, and related health professionals must learn to recognize how aging, disability, and chronic illness affects individuals and their families' physical, psychological, and social functioning in order to develop effective interventions for their clients. This article discusses prevention strategies to help facilitate functional consequences of aging, including chronic illness and disease and offers suggestions for assisting clients to cope and manage the consequences of illness in frail elder adults.

Increasing access to health care: examination of hospital community benefits and free care programs.

The present study explored hospital community benefits and free care programs at seven hospitals in Nassau and Suffolk counties in Long Island, NewYork. There were two components to this project: (1) assessment of information regarding the availability of free care and (2) an analysis of the community benefits information filed with state regulatory offices. Results show that not one of the seven hospitals consistently informed surveyors that free care was available to low-income, uninsured people.

Understanding and managing systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune disease that many people know little about. Lupus can affect the skin, joints, kidney, heart, lungs, nervous system, blood and other organs or systems. For most people it is a relatively mild disease; for others it causes life-threatening problems.