Policy change is hard. Just think about the 2010 Affordable Care Act, its tortuous path toward enactment, and the ongoing debates five years later that swirl around the law and its implementation. There are many theories for how policy change happens, but one of my favorites is Kingdon’s policy streams…
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Todd Shurn and his mother, Alice, in 2013. Todd became a fulltime caregiver when his mother could no longer live on her own due to dementia. Photo courtesy of Todd Shurn. Editor’s Note: The Jan. 15 deadline for submissions to the John A. Hartford Foundation’s second annual story contest…
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“Whoever said nothing is impossible obviously hasn't tried nailing Jell-O to a tree.”—John Candy As the year comes to a close, there are many lists of the best and worst in almost every imaginable category for 2014. Here at Health AGEnda, we have made an annual practice of reviewing the…
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About a year ago, we posted a holiday gift for you—a Tools You Can Use blog that featured a free toolkit with evidence-based resources for staff in senior living communities promoting non-pharmacologic strategies to address behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia. We got a lot of response to that post…
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The opening session of the Hartford Change AGEnts Conference in Philadelphia last week. Last week was the capstone of the first-year rollout of the Hartford Change AGEnts Initiative. This projects aims to engage and support all prior John A. Hartford Foundation health and aging grantees to focus on making…
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In June 2011, I wrote about my then-80-year-old father’s experiences with post-operative confusion -- otherwise known as delirium -- following triple bypass surgery. Three-and-a-half years later, that post continues to draw thousands of readers every month, along with comments that express the frustration and heartbreak that is still all too…
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Are you a family caregiver of an older adult or a health care provider who works with family caregivers? Have you seen the challenges of caregiving up close and discovered ways of overcoming them? If you said yes, you have an important story to tell and we want you to…
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For two decades, the John A. Hartford Foundation has invested in the development and spread of the Hospital at Home model of care, which provides safe, high-quality, hospital-level care to older adults with select conditions in the comfort of their own home. Over those years, studies have consistently shown that…
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For almost 20 years, the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) has been one of the John A. Hartford Foundation’s key grantee partners. The organization served first as the home of the Geriatric Social Work Initiative (GSWI), then as the coordinating center for the National Hartford Center of Gerontological Nursing Excellence…
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We were introduced to Sally and her daughter Edna last year in a video from our grantee Community Catalyst. I learned recently that Sally has since passed away, but I am so grateful that her and her daughter’s story lives on. It embodies the promise of the Voices for Better…
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