Volume 3, Issue 2
December 8, 2006

In This Issue

1. Four Grants Awarded by Hartford Trustees (December 2006)
2. Medical Student Geriatrics Scholars Program is Renamed MSTAR
3. CSWE Gero-Ed Center Launches E-Learning Series
4. New Social Work Doctoral Fellows Selected
5. 2006 Nursing Curriculum Awards Announced
6. Communications Tip: Using Email Signatures to Promote Your Project

1. The trustees of the JAHF recently approved the following grants:

Integrating Geriatrics into the Specialties of Internal Medicine: Moving Forward from Awareness to Action
The Foundation awarded a grant to the Association of Specialty Professors to help prepare current and future internal medicine specialists to better care for older patients. The award will fund a series of research agenda setting meetings to help focus federal research funding on the needs of older adults, enhancements to the T. Franklin Williams Scholars program for junior faculty physicians who are specialty researchers in geriatrics, and the creation of working groups focused on geriatrics within internal medicine professional societies. This grant builds on the work of 12 years of prior funding to the American Geriatrics Society to integrate geriatrics into the subspecialties and specialties of internal medicine.

Association of Specialty Professors, Washington, DC
Kevin P. High, MD
Grant amount: $2,639,358 over four years

Geriatrics Leadership Development Program
To support geriatrics program directors, who face complex clinical and academic management issues, the Foundation awarded a grant to the Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs (ADGAP). The grant will provide leadership training to 20 recently appointed leaders of medical school geriatrics divisions. It will also enable ADGAP to implement a scholars program for 16 senior directors and hold three leadership retreats for approximately 60 program directors annually. The Hartford Foundation has supported the leadership training program since 2001.

Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs,
New York, NY
David B. Reuben, MD
Grant amount: $1,615,653 over four years

Increasing Gerontological Competencies in MSW Advanced Curriculum Areas
The Foundation awarded a grant to help schools of social work better prepare advanced master’s program students specializing in health, mental health, and substance abuse to care for older adults by producing reviews of existing evidence-based literature relevant to aging and by providing small grants for up to 20 master’s in social work programs to develop methods to infuse gerontological competencies into their classes. Since 1998, the Foundation has invested $48.6 million in the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative.

Council on Social Work Education, Alexandria, VA
Sadhna Diwan, PhD, and Nancy Hooyman, PhD
Grant amount: $1,500,000 over four years

Fostering Geriatrics in Associate Degree Nursing Education
Although associate degree nurses comprise 63 percent of the nursing workforce, there has been little attention paid to the geriatric education of these nurses. The Foundation awarded this grant to conduct a national survey of associate degree nursing programs to identify the current issues and gaps in geriatrics education, convene a task force of leaders in geriatric nursing to review the current curricula and resources, and disseminate the findings and resources produced through this initiative.

Community College of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
Elaine Tagliareni, EdD, RN
Grant amount: $590,547 over two years

2. Medical Student Geriatrics Scholars Program is Renamed MSTAR

The medical student geriatrics scholars program, administered by the American Federation for Aging Research (AFAR) and supported by the Foundation, has been renamed. The program is now the Medical Student Training in Aging Research (MSTAR) Program.

In recent years, additional sponsors, including the National Institute on Aging (NIA), have helped to strengthen and expand the program, making it a mainstay in the field’s efforts to increase the number of physicians with special expertise in geriatrics. The new name was chosen to help ensure that the program is easily recognized nationwide.

The next application deadline for the MSTAR program is February 7, 2007. For program details and an online application please go to: www.afar.org/medstu.html or call the American Federation for Aging Research at 212.703.9977.

3. CSWE Gero-Ed Center Launches E-Learning Series

4. New Social Work Doctoral Fellows Selected

Eleven social work students have been selected by The Gerontological Society of America for the second cycle of the 2006 cohort of the Hartford Doctoral Fellowship program. Recipients will each receive a $50,000 dissertation grant plus $20,000 in matching support from their home institutions that will enable them to more fully concentrate on their dissertation research projects over the next two years. Awardees are:

Sharon Bowland
Washington University in St. Louis
Evaluating a psycho-social-spiritual intervention with older women who are survivors of interpersonal trauma

Jewell Brazelton
The University of Chicago
African American women looking back: Making meaning of the disclosure process of incest survivors across the life course

John Cagle
Virginia Commonwealth University
Long distance caregivers of terminally ill cancer patients: Sources of support and bereavement adjustment

Michele Day
University of Missouri-Columbia
Exploring the hospice interdisciplinary team collaboration focused on pain management

Brooke Funderburk
University of California, Los Angeles
Regret and advice: Elder-defined pathways to successful aging

Lauren Hersch Nicholas
Columbia University
Medicare advantage? Effects of Medicare Managed Care on quality, enrollment, and cost of health care for the elderly

Jeungkun Kim
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Gender differences in labor force participation of older persons: An international perspective study

Marie McCormick
Fordham University
My body, my self: The meaning of the food-body-eating-self phenomenon in the lifeworld of the older woman

Rajean Moon
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
National policy diffusion of cost sharing in the 2000 reauthorization of the Older Americans Act

Kyaien O'Quinn Conner
University of Pittsburgh
Treatment seeking among older adults with depression: The impact of stigma and race

Barbara Thomas
University of Michigan
The childhood shows the man as the morning shows the day: Three essays on childhood maltreatment, current social relationships, and physical health.

5. 2006 Baccalaureate Nursing Curriculum Awards Announced

The John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing, in collaboration with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), has announced the winners of the 2006 Awards for Baccalaureate Education in Geriatric Nursing. Now in its ninth year, this national awards program honors nursing programs that exhibit exceptional, substantive, and innovative baccalaureate curriculum in this subject area. Beyond innovation, programs must also demonstrate relevance in the clinical environment and have the ability to be replicated at schools of nursing across the country. Awards were presented in four separate categories:

Geriatric Faculty Member Award
Christine A. Mueller, PhD, RN, BC, CNAA
University of Minnesota

Infusing Geriatrics into the Curriculum Award
Old Dominion University

Clinical Settings in Geriatric Nursing Award
University of Missouri Sinclair School of Nursing

Stand-Alone Baccalaureate Geriatric Course Award
Johns Hopkins University

For more information about the awards, visit: www.aacn.nche.edu/Media/NewsReleases/2006/HartAwards.htm

6. Communications Tip: Using Email Signatures to Promote Your Project

One of the easiest but often underused tools for promoting your program or project is an email signature. Email signatures can include not only your name, address and phone number, but your lab or program's Web address and a tag line. Outlook and other email programs make it simple to create such a signature and automatically include it in every email you send, thus making it easy for your recipients to find out more about your work. Email signatures are a great opportunity to be creative about inviting readers to participate in or subscribe to something you offer or learn about a new aspect of your work.
To learn more about using email signatures effectively, read the following article by Nancy Schwartz, a marketing and communications consultant for nonprofits, at: www.nancyschwartz.com/email_signatures.html.