Volume 2, Issue 4
March 29, 2006
In This Issue
- New Grants Awarded by Hartford Trustees (March 2006)
- Social Work Practicum Partnership Program Expands to 25 New Sites
- New IMPACT Studies Point to Powerful Benefits, Cost-Effectiveness
- Social Work Study Warns of Labor Shortage
- 75th Anniversary Report Wins Communications Award
- Communications Tip: Make Better Presentations
1. The trustees of the JAHF recently approved the following grants.
Advancing the Palliative Care Field: A Consortium Funded Initiative
Center to Advance Palliative Care, Mount Sinai School of Medicine,
New York , NY
Diane E. Meier, MD
$750,000, Three Years
Summary
As part of a coalition of funders, the John A. Hartford Foundation awarded $750,000 over three years to the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to further develop the field of palliative care. Palliative care teams specialize in the care of patients with multiple chronic illnesses to ameliorate symptoms so that they may live in greater comfort and independence. It is estimated that at least 70% of the patients receiving palliative care are over the age of 65.
With this grant, CAPC seeks to embed palliative care into healthcare delivery through technical support, educational materials and tools; development of leaders in the field; educational outreach; and engagement of regulatory and accrediting bodies.
Additional Information
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) was established in 2000 with a five-year $9 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. CAPC's mission is to increase the number and quality of palliative care programs in hospitals and health systems in the United States . The Center also serves as an educational and communications hub to increase awareness of, and demand for, palliative care services. In its first five years of existence, CAPC contributed to a 75% increase in the number of palliative care programs in the nation, now available in 1,200 hospitals. Further information is available at www.capc.org.
Geriatric Training Program Development Grant
University of Utah
Salt Lake City , UT
Mark A. Supiano, MD
$100,000, Two Years
Summary
To support the development of an emerging geriatrics training program, the John A. Hartford Foundation awarded $100,000 to the University of Utah to support development of fellows and faculty in geriatric medicine. This grant will complement recent local commitments to geriatric medicine and will be used to help develop fellows' research skills and provide travel funds to national conferences to expose future faculty members to experts in aging medicine.
This grant was awarded to support Mark A. Supiano, MD, formerly a senior faculty member at the University of Michigan Hartford-funded Center of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and Training, in his new position as the director of the division of geriatric medicine at the University of Utah .
Additional Information
The Foundation's Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine and Training program was established in 1988 to develop a critical mass of physician-faculty trained to prepare physicians in the health care needs of older adults. There are currently 24 Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine located around the nation. In December, 2005, Foundation Trustees approved a supplement to the program to support the transition of senior faculty from CoEs who have assumed leadership of geriatric programs at other medical schools.
description of the Hartford Foundation's programs to recruit and develop medical school faculty to teach geriatrics is available at www.jhartfound.org/IDEAS/medfaculty.
2.
Social Work Practicum Partnership Program Expands to 25 New Sites
The Social Work Leadership Institute (SWLI) at the New York Academy of Medicine recently announced grants to 25 schools of social work, including three consortia, as part of the Practicum Partnership Program (PPP) Adoption Initiative. The $75,000, three-year awards will help to develop university-community partnerships to provide MSW students with aging-rich field experiences across the continuum of care. The awards will be matched with at least $75,000 by the participating schools. These grants build on the work of the first six PPP sites and the ten expansion grants awarded in December 2005, and are part of a program to bring PPP to 60 MSW programs nationally.
The following schools were awarded implementation grants:
Adelphi University, New York
Baylor University, Texas
Boston College, Massachusetts
Boston University, Massachusetts
California State, Chico
Case Western Reserve University, Ohio
Florida State University
Michigan State University
Rutgers, State University of New Jersey
University of Connecticut
University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work (Colorado)
University of Iowa
University of Kansas
University of Kentucky
University of Montana
University of Nebraska at Omaha
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
University of Washington
Widener University, Pennsylvania
The three consortia funded are:
SUNY Brockport and SUNY Buffalo, New York
Loyola University and University of Chicago, Illinois
Texas State University, San Marcos, and the University of Texas at Austin.
For more information about the PPP, please see: www.jhartfound.org/ideas/PPP/
3.
New IMPACT Studies Point to Powerful Benefits, Cost-Effectiveness
Building off data from its promising clinical trial, the IMPACT (Improving Mood – Promoting Access to Collaborative Treatment for Late Life Depression) program has released three cost-effectiveness studies since December. The original trial demonstrated that IMPACT’s innovative team care approach could reduce late-life depression twice as effectively as regular care. Healthcare providers have become more interested in treating clinical depression in recent years, as the condition is associated with a variety of chronic conditions and can drive up health care costs. The expense of this team approach, therefore, is increasingly important, especially as IMPACT seeks broad adoption of its model in primary care settings across the country. IMPACT studies found that the benefits of the 12-month team care intervention were sustained more than a year later, that they produced an extra 107 depression-free days over the course of two years, and reduced the annual overall healthcare costs of older diabetics with depression by almost $1,000.
For more information about this research and the IMPACT project, please see: www.jhartfound.org/ideas/IMPACT
4.
Social Work Study Warns of Labor Shortage
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), in a recent, national study of licensed social workers, warns of an impending shortage of social workers that threaten future services for all Americans, especially children and older adults.
NASW conducted the study, “Assuring the Sufficiency of a Frontline Workforce: A National Study of Licensed Social Workers,” as the profession looks to an increasingly challenging future. The need and demand for social work services for the aging will increase dramatically in the next several decades. Despite these projections, the research reports that the number of new social workers providing services to older adults is actually decreasing.
“Social workers are one of the largest and most diverse health professions in the United States,” says Dr. Elizabeth Clark, executive director of NASW. “They have the education and training to look at how all factors in a person’s life – family, work, health and mental health – work together. This study highlights the need to find new and innovative ways for the profession to retain the current workforce and recruit new social workers to accommodate the impending demand.”
This compelling study, funded in part by the Hartford Foundation, provides even greater urgency for the work of the Foundation’s Geriatric Social Work Initiative (www.gswi.org), which is focused on expanding the capacity of the social work education community to produce greater numbers of “aging-savvy” professionals. The study, can be found at: workforce.socialworkers.org.
5.
75th Anniversary Report Wins Communications Award
The Foundation’s 75th anniversary annual report and action briefs, Celebrating Seventy-Five Years, received a bronze 2005 Magellan Award from the League of American Communications Professionals.
The Foundation’s materials were judged on their first impressions, clarity of communications goals, key messages, target audience definition, campaign execution, and campaign results. Celebrating Seventy-Five Years was selected from among 35 entries in the Non-Profit/Charity/Foundation category and ranked 57th out of 482 entries overall. Fewer than one in four entries received award-level recognition in this competition, and the John A. Hartford Foundation was the only private foundation whose work was honored.
The Magellan Awards are one of the nation’s most respected competitions among public relations firms, and are judged by a panel of communications and public relations experts. The program is administered by the League of American Communications Professionals (LACP), an organization dedicated to supporting and recognizing excellence in the practice of professional communications. To learn more about LACP and future Magellan Awards programs visit: www.lacp.com/2005magellan/C10.HTM.
6.
Communications Tip: Make Better Presentations
Suffered through one too many bad PowerPoints lately? Unsure how to improve your own? Communications consultant Andy Goodman’s Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes helps individuals and organizations avoid the most commonly made presentations mistakes (“The Fatal Five”), structure information in ways that help audiences absorb it, use PowerPoint more effectively, and deliver talks with greater confidence. Based on unprecedented research across the public interest sector, and incorporating the advice of twenty highly regarded public speaking experts, Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes was designed and published by Cause Communications. To order the report or learn more about Mr. Goodman’s other publications, visit: www.agoodmanonline.com.
Copyright 2004 The John A. Hartford Foundation
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