Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis
It takes partnership and perseverance to move forward when an unforeseen disaster like COVID-19 occurs. For JAHF, that meant immediately aligning our work to respond to the crisis by providing support and flexibility to our grantees, disseminating guidance and tools from trusted sources and offering insight on how nursing homes can best protect residents and staff, as well as older adults who are homebound now and in the future.
Supporting Nursing Homes and Reimagining their Future
Nursing home residents and their staff bore the brunt of COVID-19, accounting for more than a third of all COVID-19 deaths. This reality demanded immediate rethinking of how nursing homes operate, train staff and protect residents.
Rapidly Responding to Frontline Needs
We created Rapid Response Network Huddles in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to help nursing home staff in navigating the changing guidance around COVID-19 and offered a space to share best practices to keep residents and personnel safe. The first Rapid Response Network Huddle launched a mere six weeks after the United States declared a national emergency and continued huddles daily through the end of summer 2020.
Reshaping Nursing Homes for the Future
We funded the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a national study to guide future federal nursing home policy and practice. We also awarded a grant to the FrameWorks Institute to recommend communications strategies to help stakeholders articulate a vision for nursing home care that is more effective, inclusive and equitable for residents and staff.
Power of Leadership
JAHF President Terry Fulmer’s appointment to the independent Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes propelled JAHF into national discussions and onto the pages of newspapers across the country. We convened experts to advance discussion about reimagining nursing homes to better ensure the harsh lessons of COVID-19 will be heeded. We rapidly responded to media stories on nursing home deaths and disparities and offered potential solutions to keep residents and staff safe.
Supporting an Age-Friendly
COVID-19 Response
The evidence-based principles of age-friendly care served as the foundation of effective COVID-19 responses across care settings. Respecting what matters to older adults remained the north star of age-friendly care and was integrated into innovative and COVID-safe methods of care delivery.
Creating 1,000 Points of Light in a Time of Darkness
Successful COVID-19 care is inextricable from effective age-friendly care. That’s why we continued to see growth in the number of Age-Friendly Health Systems participant sites despite the challenges of 2020. With a goal of reaching 1,000 care locations, by the end of the year nearly 2,000 sites participated in the initiative. JAHF and its partners developed resources and webinars to ensure age-friendly principles served as the foundation for care during the pandemic. Leaders from two health systems shared how the 4Ms framework for age-friendly care—what Matters, Medication, Mentation and Mobility—informed their health system’s COVID-19 response during a Modern Healthcare webinar.
Developing Timely and Urgently Needed Resources
We worked with several grantees and partners to provide information and leadership for responding to COVID-19, tailored to each organization’s unique areas of expertise. The Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative, Center to Advance Palliative Care, Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly and Better Care Playbook were among those who sprung into action and developed urgently needed resources rooted in their deep knowledge about improving the care of older adults.
Delivering Care Differently
Rethinking how care is delivered was fundamental to keeping older adults and their families safe during the pandemic. Many of the innovative age-friendly care models JAHF and its grantees were exploring and advocating for before the pandemic—like home-based primary care, telehealth and hospital at home—were deemed COVID-safe methods of care delivery. These models had already demonstrated that they lower costs and improve outcomes. In the past year, they’ve shown that they can keep older adults safe from COVID and help them stay current with their regular medical care.
Other 2020 Initiatives
Promoting Equity and Access
We are working to expand equal access to age-friendly care for everyone, regardless of background or ZIP code and will continue to place a concerted focus on reaching communities that historically face inequity in health care access and quality of care.
The Power of Our Collective Work
We continuously work across our three priority areas—
Age-Friendly Health Systems, Family Caregiving and
Serious Illness & End of Life—to increase the collective power of our work and maximize the value of
our investments.
Other Annual Report Sections
Grants
Our new and existing grants supported critically important work in 2020 to meet urgent needs for older adults.
Financials
Responsiveness and diversity enabled the Foundation’s financials to grow through an economically turbulent time.
2020 Milestones
We made significant progress through a year that required us to adapt quickly to ever-changing circumstances.