That’s Age-Friendly! 

Our close collaboration with grantees and partners made 2022 a watershed year for The John A. Hartford Foundation, marked by intention and tenacity leading to large-scale improvements in the care of older adults. We supported the development and release of the most comprehensive recommendations to improve nursing home care since the 1980s, a first-ever national strategy to support family caregivers and a new paradigm for talking to the public about end-of-life and serious illness care.

You’ll often hear our Trustees and staff pointing to positive shifts resulting from our efforts, noting: “That’s age-friendly!” It’s why we chose this phrase as our theme for the 2022 Annual Report—it encapsulates what we do and what we stand for.

That’s age-friendly! serves as a reminder that we can intentionally make care and all aspects of society age-friendly, from our health systems, to public health, to community-based services. Age-friendly care extends to supporting family caregivers of older adults and centers on what matters to older people and their families, which is especially critical during serious illness and at the end of life.

Age-friendly care is equitable care. The Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative provides guidance on how to address inequities. We are supporting new generations of leaders of color through the American Society on Aging’s ASA RISE program program to shape inclusive aging policies and programs at the “local, state and federal levels”. We continue core support grants to national advocacy organizations that are tenacious and undaunted in the pursuit of health equity for marginalized older adults.

Our 2022 grants intentionally linked our priority areas—such as bringing the 4Ms of age-friendly health care to family caregivers and integrating serious illness messaging in Age-Friendly Health Systems sites. We saw connections continue to strengthen between our programs that promote age-friendly care in specific settings, such as emergency departments, surgical units, nursing homes and residential homes. Our grants demonstrate a range of dynamic approaches that effectively promote age-friendly care through new tools and resources. Many of our grants are fueling federal and state policy change.

While there were many highlights from 2022, three particularly demonstrate the power of intention and tenacity in making care for older adults age-friendly:

• The National Academies nursing home report and creating the Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition

  The bold National Imperative to Improve Nursing Home Quality report released in April 2022 represents a new dawn for nursing homes. The report’s comprehensive set of feasible yet transformational recommendations in critical areas such as workforce and financing are backed by evidence and experts, including residents and family caregivers. To ensure the recommendations move to action, we funded the Moving Forward Coalition. The coalition launched with 100 participants and today engages 800 members including advocates, nursing home staff, operators, researchers, residents and family members. Committees are prioritizing actions that will be taken in the near and longer term to radically improve nursing home care throughout the country.

• RAISE National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers

  A true cross-sector partnership, the RAISE National Strategy represents decades of work to elevate the needs of family caregivers, and by extension the direct care workers with whom they work so closely. The strategy outlines actions that 15 federal agencies will take, and provides clear and concrete steps that states, health systems, employers, nonprofits and philanthropy should enact to meet the needs of caregivers as the critical lifelines they are. We continue our close partnership with the Administration for Community Living and the National Academy for State Health Policy to implement this whole-of-society strategy.

• Increasing public understanding of serious illness and end-of-life care

  Improving serious illness and end-of-life care is a hallmark issue for us, especially as it relates to increasing conversations about ‘what matters’ to older adults. This is why we’re so proud of the new Serious Illness Messaging Toolkit, which uses consumer-informed messaging to help clinicians and others engage in understandable discussions about advanced care planning, palliative care and hospice. Supported by a dedicated coalition of 12 national organizations, this easy-to-use toolkit is a gamechanger that will help the field engage the public in new and more effective ways.

As we look back on 2022 and mark three somber years since the start of a horrific pandemic, we are fortunate to have emerged as an even more tenacious and nimble foundation. We are driven by a fervent desire to achieve our mission and empowered by our forward-thinking Trustees, whose oversight encourages and strengthens our impact.

We recognize the considerable contributions and celebrate the retirement of board member Audrey McNiff in 2022 and graciously thank Peggy Wolff as she completed her term as board Chair. In June of last year, we presented our dear colleague Marie Bernard, MD, chief officer for scientific workforce diversity at the National Institutes of Health, with The John A. Hartford Foundation Trustees Award for her steadfast dedication to improving the lives of older adults through research, education and clinical practice improvement.

Thank you for another strong year focused on doing what’s needed to improve the lives and care of older adults, no matter how long it takes or what shape it forms.

That’s our intention, and that’s age-friendly!

Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN President

John R. Mach, Jr., MD Chair