From left, Cherie Brunker, Meg Wallhagen, Rosanne Leipzig, and Aanand Naik put their pieces of the puzzle together to complete the picture at the recent Change AGEnts event at the AGS annual meeting. From left, Cherie Brunker, Meg Wallhagen, Rosanne Leipzig, and Aanand Naik put their pieces of the puzzle together to complete the picture at the recent Change AGEnts event at the AGS annual meeting.

For the thousands of researchers and clinicians who have been a part of the John A. Hartford Foundation’s programs during the past three decades, we are pleased to invite you to put your geriatrics expertise to work by becoming an active Hartford Change AGEnt.

You can now enroll in the online Change AGEnts Community, where you can find other Change AGEnts and work together to make our health care system better for older adults and their families.

Whether you have been a scholar, fellow, mentor, advisor, consultant, staff member, or PI on a Hartford project, the online Community will help you put your expertise to work and engage your passion for making real world changes in the care of older people. You probably realize that you can’t accomplish all you want as a lone wolf (howl as you may).

And there are likely skills you still need to develop and lessons to learn about practice change that are very different from what you studied or use in your academic roles. This is where the online platform of the Change AGEnts Community comes in. It can help you:

  • Connect with experts across the country through the Change AGEnts directory.
  • Start or join a micro-community and discuss shared practice change interests.
  • Share resources and materials with the entire Change AGEnts Community through the Open Forum or just with your micro-community.
  • Add events to the Community calendar.

At the recent American Geriatrics Society (AGS) annual meeting in Orlando, everyone who attended our Hartford Change AGEnts event got a puzzle piece at the door and had to find their matching pieces to make a complete puzzle. Then they took a picture. The idea was that different people with different expertise from different professions and disciplines are needed to change and improve health care for older adults. We hope the pieces can all come together through the online community.

Of course, the online Community will grow in its power and benefit as each of you brings your piece of the puzzle by building your profile and beginning to share your ideas, documents, and tools with others. Nearly 300 Change AGEnts have already logged on to the Community and two-thirds of the group has begun updating their profiles.

The Community will also provide you with up-to-the-minute news on the rest of the Change AGEnts initiative. There are free skill-building webinars, small grants programs, and various conferences and workshops to help you move evidence-based/informed geriatric care into health care delivery settings.

And don’t forget, if you were at our Change AGEnts event at the AGS annual meeting and registered in our online profile-building contest, we will be announcing the contest winners on the Community Open Forum this afternoon. The only way to find out if you are one of the lucky iPad recipients is to have registered on the site. For those who weren’t at AGS, stay tuned for more Community engagement contests.

Getting started

Everyone attending the Change AGEnts event at AGS got a puzzle piece at the door and had to find their matching pieces to make a complete puzzle. Then they took a picture. The idea was that different people with different expertise from different professions and disciplines are needed to change and improve health care for older adults. We hope the pieces can all come together through the online community. Everyone has a piece of the puzzle to bring to our new online Community.

If you have been a Hartford scholar or fellow in medicine, nursing, or social work, or if you have been a grant project leader in any of our academic or models of care work, you should have received an email inviting you to join the Change AGEnts Community with instructions on how to build your profile and begin connecting with other Change AGEnts.

Getting started is easy and just takes 10 minutes. And in case you can’t find your invitation email from changeAGEnts365@geron.org, check at the end of this post for instructions on how to access the online Community.

Finally, if you were involved with any Hartford project at any time in our Aging and Health program in any way, you are invited to join the Change AGEnts Community, but you may have not been in our initial master list. Again, please email us at changeAGEnts365@geron.org and we can get you set up and connected.

Practice change is hard, but critically needed to improve the health of older Americans and their families. We look forward to joining with you and helping you join with one another to move this important work forward.

Instructions for joining the Hartford Change AGEnts Online Community

Go to community.changeagents365.org. Click the “Login to see members only content” on the top right side of the page.

  • If you are a member of The Gerontological Society of America, you may use your GSA login credentials to get started.
  • If you are not a GSA member, select “Forgot password” to have your username and password emailed to you.
  • If your username/email isn’t there or isn’t up to date, complete this form and send it to changeAGEnts365@geron.org. Your account will be activated within three days.

Once logged in, click My Profile and update your record by uploading a photo, inputting job history, and creating a short bio. (You may also upload your professional profile through Linkedin; click the link on the profile page!)

You are automatically in the open forum community so when you post a question it goes to a network of more than 2,500 people.

You will receive a daily digest email summarizing comments made in the open forum discussion. If you would like to change your email preferences go to My Profile and click My Settings. You have the option of receiving messages in real time, daily, or no messages at all.

For more information, check out the Getting Started Guide and FAQ.