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Introduction: Students in the Frontiers in Human Aging course at UCLA participate in service-learning (SL) with older adults In 2020, completion of SL coincided with the outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic We evaluated the impact of SL on student attitudes on aging and community service in the context of the pandemic Methods: Students were assigned to senior residential and daycare programs for 18-20 hours of SL A retrospective pretest-posttest survey asked about attitudes and interests before and after SL and how the COVID-19 pandemic affected these perceptions;73 (of 103) students responded Mean differences before and after SL were tested and differences were assessed within groups reporting COVID-19 effects Results: SL improved students’ attitudes and ability to engage with older adults, knowledge about aging concepts, interest in future work with older adults, attitudes on community service, social well-being and feelings of usefulness (p<0 001) There was no significant change in overall anxiety about aging (p=0 1), however, students showed increased anxiety about losing independence and finances when older (p<0 05) At least 50% of students reported that the COVID-19 pandemic increased their awareness of needs of older adults (81 9%) and decreased connection to their peers (50 7%);the impact of SL remained unchanged by these effects Conclusion: Despite the overall benefits of SL, increased anxiety about aspects of aging suggests the need to address these concerns While the COVID-19 pandemic did not seem to affect the impact of SL, this event did seem to influence perceptions about aging and social integration
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