Asian Center

 What is PATH?

PATH stands for Personal Action Toward Health, a Chronic Disease Self-Management (CDSM) program adopted by Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). It is a six-week workshop conducted in two and a half hour weekly sessions in community settings. The program was developed and tested by Stanford University to help people learn the techniques and strategies they need for the day-to-day management of chronic diseases.

Benefits

Program participants reported improved symptom management, communication with physicians, self-efficacy, physical activity, and general health compared to those who had not participated in the workshop. Additional studies showed that program participants spent fewer nights in the hospital and used fewer health services over a two-year period compared to their status prior to the program, which yielded a cost-to-savings ratio of approximately 1:10. Many of these results persisted for as long as three years.

Who should participate?

PATH is designed to benefit adults with chronic or long-term health conditions including arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, emphysema, asthma, bronchitis and depression. Family members, friends, and caregivers are also encouraged to attend the workshop.

Asian Center – SE MI PATH Program

The PATH program is spread widely in Michigan. There is a large group of healthcare agencies and workers using this program to help patients with chronic disease(s). Asian Center –SE MI is one of the agencies who offer this workshop in Michigan; and the only agency who can also offer it in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese in addition to English.

The workshop is usually taught by 2 leaders, and the workshop size is limited to 10-16 participants to be effective. Leaders are usually trained by organizations that have master trainers who can offer leaders training. Asian Center – SE MI has 2 master trainers who can train leaders. Whenever there are 8 to 16 people interested in becoming leaders, AC-SE MI is willing to offer a leader training workshop.

In addition to the regular CDSM workshops, Stanford also offers diabetes CDSM. With the increasing diabetes problem in the nation, MDCH also adapted Stanford’s new efforts and offered to train diabetes PATH leaders so Michigan can also offer diabetes PATH programs in 2010. Asian Center – SE MI endorsed  this effort and also had 3 PATH leaders trained to be diabetes PATH leaders and in 2011 taught the first diabetes PATH workshop in Chinese.

Asian Center – SE MI Trained PATH Leaders

Asian Indians:

2008: Meera Vijan, Vineeta Rao, and Nancy Bhatt

2011: Mohana Walambe, and Anil Walambe

Chinese:

2007: Janilla Lee*, Hwa-Sung Na*, Judy Chen*, and Lee-Whey Lin

2008: Lihong Williamson, Teresa Sun, and Hey-Fong Liang,

2010: Juming Cheng

2011: Jessica Wang

Filipinos:

2007: Tess Tchou

2010: Remy Solarte, Lily Diego, Emma Pacris, and Cesario Solarte Jr.

Koreans:

2008: Nansil Grady, Grace Chang, and Jean Oh

2010: Jean Bart, Eunjung Jong

2011: Mi Dong

Vietnamese:

2010: Marie Huynh, Lily Phuong-Ahn Pham, and Kim-hao Olbrys

Asian Center – SE MI PATH Records in 2010