Oscar's Next Steps: Researching Impact of Home Repairs on Well-being

My name is Oscar Wang. I’m a medical student at the Indiana University School of Medicine. I had the opportunity to volunteer with Home Repairs for Good over this past summer. Since then, I’ve been able to look back on my time spent volunteering and simply put, I would not changed a single thing about my experience.

It was through IUSM’s AmeriCorps program that I got the chance to connect with Home Repairs for Good and work with them over the summer. IU’s medical school offers many summer opportunities but AmeriCorps was the one that spoke to me the most. I’ve always loved doing community service and through AmeriCorps I could contribute to my local community. I also have my program director, Niki Messmore, and the folks at Home Repairs for Good to thank, for making this the meaningful experience that it was.

However, my journey as a medical student continues with Home Repairs for Good. One of the topics we discussed in my first year of medical school was ‘aging in place’. In other words, it’s the ability for a person to grow older while staying in their own home.

Aging in place allows someone to live safely, maintain their independence, and save them a fortune compared to moving to a nursing home. I got to see the impact of people aging in place firsthand while volunteering with Home Repairs for Good over the summer. I listened to stories from homeowners about how long they’ve stayed in their homes, how they raised their children in said home, and see just how much owning a home meant to people.

The issue is aging in place is not without its challenges. Only 10% of homes in the country are considered “aging-ready.” Not every home is safe, accessible, or easy to move around, especially if you’re an older adult. Reading more about these statistics and challenges is where I really came to understand Home Repairs for Good’s mission.

One of the research articles I found talked about how these home challenges were linked to both physical and mental health problems. This resonated with me not only as someone studying medicine, but someone who wants to go into psychiatry. I found that while there is a lot of research looking at how housing quality links to health outcomes, there isn’t much research looking into how home repair services can help change that. 

That’s what I hope to change with my research project, which I’m collaborating with Home Repairs for Good on for these next few years. The goal of my study is to look into the quality of life and mental health of older homeowners in the Indianapolis area and, through a series of surveys, look at how home repairs can make a difference on a person’s mental wellbeing through the quality of their home.

I got to present the design for this study at IUSM’s annual IMPRS research symposium. I think what stuck with me the most during this was sharing this topic with my classmates and seeing their enthusiasm for this project. 

The road for this project remains long. It always helps to break a big project like this into smaller goals. Currently, I’m focusing on creating the survey that I’ll be giving to people participating in the study, and then figuring out a timeline to start reaching out to homeowners. That being said, I’m excited to see how this project turns out, and to the person reading this post, I hope you’ll get to see the results of this study and the impact it makes. Till then, thanks for taking the time to read about who I am!

To learn more about Oscar and his volunteer experience with us, check out our last blog post on him by clicking here!