As the devastating impact of COVID-19 continues to affect the country it has never been more important to improve the experience provided to millions of older adults in senior living and long-term care. Social isolation has proven to be as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and can increase a person’s chance of developing dementia such as Alzheimer’s disease by 20%. From a May 2020 Linked Senior study, data shows that the burden of work experienced by activity and life enrichment staff has doubled with no sign of a hiring increase for the rest of 2020 according to the National Association of Activity Professionals. This has led to a reduction in meaningful engagement for older adults in senior living communities which can negatively impact their quality of life. As the country reopens the economy, the senior living industry must come together to rebuild its resident engagement standards and strategy.

To address this challenge, two leaders in the resident engagement industry have partnered to empower senior living staff with an evidence-based platform to engage all residents in a meaningful way. This unique partnership will allow Activity Connection users exclusive access and preferential pricing to the Linked Senior Celo application offering expanded programming tools to further enhance the Activity Connection experience and overall resident engagement efforts.

Charles de Vilmorin, CEO and Co-founder of Linked Senior, shared that, “Activity Connection is by far the most successful company in the resident engagement field by its experience, longstanding commitment to quality engagement of older adults and commercial success. We are extremely excited to partner on this meaningful and extremely timely initiative to help the senior living industry empower their staff to use their passion to fight COVID-19 related isolation.”

Since joining Activity Connection in 2018, Mathew Guilfoyle has been very busy retooling the organization internally and was recently promoted to President in July, 2020. He offered a candid assessment of the partnership as well: “Better together. That’s what it’s all about, really. Each time we discussed the potential value and new opportunities for exceptional, personalized resident engagement that we would be able to extend to Activity Connection subscribers by offering exclusive access and discounted pricing to the Linked Senior Celo Basic app, it just made more sense. No matter which angle we looked at this project from, it boiled down to Activity Connection and Linked Senior, they’re better together, and if we are able to make this overall solution much more affordable to our subscribers to help them enrich the lives of seniors in new ways, we’re all for it.”

Linked Senior is an evidence-based resident engagement platform for senior living. The platform optimizes the person-centered experience for residents by empowering staff with digital tools to assess, plan, implement and evaluate engagement for the entire resident population.

Activity Connection was founded in 1999 as an online community and resource for activity professionals. Over the years it has evolved into the website that you see today. They are headquartered in Portland, Oregon and their founders, partners, staff and freelance contributors are located throughout the country.