I am pleased to present the 2009 John A. Hartford Foundation’s Annual Report. This issue focuses on the critical role social workers play in helping older adults maintain healthy, vigorous, and independent lives. This is no easy task. Eight out of ten seniors cope with at least one chronic medical condition, and more than half contend with several. Financial issues can also become a serious concern, as can loneliness, depression, transportation, mobility, and communication. Meeting the needs of even one individual—let alone our rapidly expanding older population—can be incredibly complicated.

Yet this is exactly what we expect from social workers. We call on them to help older adults and families navigate, understand, and choose among a confusing array of health and social services. We ask them to provide counseling and direct services, facilitate family support, and coordinate professional care delivery. Fortunately, today’s social worker is better prepared to meet these challenges than ever before. It is critically needed work. Ten years ago less than ten percent of faculty members in graduate programs across the country had formal training in aging issues, and only seven percent of these programs’ doctoral dissertations addressed geriatrics topics. Today, the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative (GSWI) is celebrating ten years of working to reverse that discouraging situation. Each day the Foundation’s investments in education, research, and practice in the field continue to increase the ranks and improve the geriatrics skills of social workers in both academia and in practice.

In 2009, the Foundation continued these investments. It aggressively pursued its mission of enhancing and expanding the training not only of social workers, but also of doctors, nurses, and a host of other health care professionals in geriatrics-related fields.

Notably, the Foundation approved an $8.4 million grant to the American Federation for Aging Research to develop and manage a National Program Office for the Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and Training. This office will consolidate program and financial operations under one roof. It will deploy the Foundation’s resources with increased efficiency and provide greater program and budget flexibility. This grant has already led to a call for proposals from existing Centers to receive funding from the new office — a system that will gradually end the current practice of directly granting awards from the Foundation to participating institutions.

With support from its new program partner, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Foundation also awarded a renewal grant worth $4.6 million to the Gerontological Society of America for the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholars Program. This funding will support 27 additional scholars over five years. The VA will complement the Foundation’s contribution and fund 6 of the 27 with a $600,000 investment. By the end of the grant, we will have supported 127 faculty leaders since 2000. The program, part of the GSWI described throughout this report, fosters an intellectually stimulating, mutually supportive network of colleagues involved in research and teaching. This growing faculty cadre will continue to increase knowledge, while training the next generation of gero-savvy social workers.

The Foundation made a $400,000 grant over three years to the Tides Center to support the Eldercare Workforce Alliance, a coalition of 25 national organizations that have joined together to address the immediate and future workforce crisis in caring for an aging America. The Alliance was created in response to the Institute of Medicine’s 2008 report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, which called for immediate investments in preparing our health care system to care for older Americans. With Foundation support, the Alliance will seek policy changes to increase compensation for direct care workers and more funding for federal training programs that improve geriatric care competencies of health professionals.

Other noteworthy grants included $698,000 to the AARP Foundation to fund the second phase of the Professional Partners Supporting Family Caregiving project. The project aims at improving nurses’ and social workers’ ability to support families caring for older adults. The first phase of the effort identified the knowledge and skills that nurses and social workers need to help family caregivers and documented evidence-based practices that can guide these professionals in their work. Phase two will implement best practices and establish standards to support caregivers, improve public policies, and raise consumer expectations for caregiver support.

Finally, a $647,000 grant to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, in collaboration with the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at New York University, builds on a prior project to enhance the gero-competence of master’s level nurses. The goals of this phase of the project are to foster the implementation of the recently developed adult-gerontology competencies via high quality learning resources, faculty development opportunities, and a new certification exam.

We are excited about these developments, but not all of the news from 2009 was as positive as we might have hoped. The economic turbulence of 2008 forced the Foundation to trim back the scope of its commitment to some programs. However, it also encouraged us to become more resourceful in our grantmaking. For example, the Board of Trustees agreed to adopt a new payout formula that will increase grant disbursement by $7 million in 2009-2010. In fact, the Foundation’s endowment ended 2009 at approximately $472 million, which represents an increase of $52 million during the year, before disbursements for grants and expenses. While the portfolio remains significantly below its high before the recent credit crisis, with the sharp recovery in the financial markets after the lows reached in March 2009, the Foundation did achieve growth in its endowment after spending and inflation. Our outsourced investment office, New Providence Asset Management, began its work in 2009 and made significant changes in the Foundation’s asset allocation and investment manager structure. We are confident that these changes will enable the Foundation to better weather market turbulence in the future and allow it to meet the long-term goals for the portfolio.

The times we live in may be challenging, but I remain strongly optimistic about the future of the John A. Hartford Foundation. With our Board of Trustees, staff, and grantees all deeply dedicated and working hard to achieve our mission, I can foresee only success on the road ahead. It has been a privilege to serve with this wonderful group, and I look forward to continuing our efforts over the coming year.

Norman H. Volk