2012 ANNUAL REPORT
Conclusion
In the early 1980s academic medicine, nursing, and social work were paying little attention to the obvious demographic imperative. “It took foundations, primarily the Hartford Foundation, to awaken the sleeping giant,” says John R. Burton, MD, Director of the Johns Hopkins Geriatric Education Center. “With program after program they changed the health care system and improved health care outcomes for older adults.”
The accomplishments of the Foundation over the past 30 years represent a remarkable collaboration among Trustees and staff, grantees, academic institutions, associations, other foundations, government agencies, and many others. With these partners the Foundation has strengthened the field of academic geriatrics, transforming the education of physicians, nurses, and social workers – who now leave training better prepared than ever to deliver excellent care to older adults.
The Foundation has also supported models of health care delivery that have been proven to provide the highest quality care for older adults, funding innovations often long before they became accepted in the mainstream. These include enhanced roles for nurses, sophisticated health care delivered in the home, information technology applied to medication error prevention, and team-based geriatric care that is well coordinated, comprehensive, and evidence based.
With 10,000 baby boomers now turning 65 every day, and a rapidly changing health care delivery system, the work of the Foundation is more important than ever. It is time to harness the expertise and passion of the grantees and scholars funded by the Foundation over the past 30 years and to work with old and new partners who are ready to meet the urgent need for delivering better health care to older adults.
The Foundation’s efforts to build capacity in academic geriatrics in medicine, nursing, and social work has set the stage for new grantmaking that will put geriatrics expertise to work in all health care settings. Together, the Foundation and its grantees will work to deliver even more coordinated, team-based, comprehensive, geriatrics-expert care that is patient and family centered.
As the Hartford Foundation celebrates the past 30 years, we also look forward to many more years of leadership, partnership, and engagement to improve health care for older adults.
“The continuing implementation of health care reform creates opportunities that have only been dreams in the past. It is time to shift from our ‘upstream’ theory of change—building academic infrastructure in preparation for aging (i.e., ‘enhancing the nation’s capacity for effective and efficient care’)—to a ‘downstream’ theory, focusing more on practice and more directly improving the health of older Americans.”
Christopher A. Langston, PhD
Program Director
The John A. Hartford Foundation