One of the Hartford Foundation’s greatest assets is the 1,000-plus Hartford-funded scholars and fellows that we have supported over the past 20 years in medicine, nursing, and social work.

So in recent months, my colleague Marcus Escobedo and I have been working to create a structure to harness the energy, enthusiasm, and expertise of our Hartford-supported leaders to advance our new strategic plan.

As many of you know, after two years of strategic planning, the Hartford Foundation will refocus its grant making from our signature faculty development, academic-based projects to efforts that will more quickly make change in the practice environment. This stems from the fact that 10,000 Americans celebrate their 65th birthday every day and we simply do not have the luxury of growing the health care workforce one geriatrics expert at a time. Moreover, there are multiple federal opportunities to which we can hitch our mission to improve the health of older Americans.

As we began exploring ways to build an effective and useful network of Hartford-supported leaders, we first had to acknowledge that we, at Hartford, have built some pretty siloed portfolios across our disciplines. That is, while we are all for team care and have funded pioneering projects that aimed to address interdisciplinary challenges, we have not done enough to bring together members of our Hartford family to use their unique skills in medicine, nursing, and social work to improve the health of our aging society.

Furthermore, when we do convene Hartford-funded folks—such as our annual Communications Conference hosted by SCP—we are always surprised, and frankly somewhat dismayed, that like-minded, aging-focused researchers and educators often do not know each other, which can lead to a myopic view of the gero world.

In September, we hosted a focus group with 17 representatives of scholar and fellow programs in nursing, social work, and medicine to discuss how to best develop a network to benefit all Hartford-funded folks interested in our practice and policy-focused vision.

From the focus group, we heard that the key benefits of such a network include mentoring, networking, regular communication, and identification with a diverse membership. Additionally, we learned that face-to-face events and collective activities are critical to keeping members engaged and sustain a sense of group identity. Participants also noted challenges, including consistently offering something of value and making certain that work done by the network does not compete with or duplicate the work/offerings of existing alumni groups of Hartford programs.

Based on this feedback, we refined the preliminary proposed goals of our new initiative to support a network of change agents:

  1. Connect, support, and develop network members as leaders in practice and policy change to improve the health of older adults;
  2. Increase national attention and support for practice and policy change to improve the health of older adults through individual and collective communication efforts;
  3. Accelerate practice and policy change to improve the health of older adults through the piloting of three to four interdisciplinary workgroups organized around specific practice improvement topics.

While we flesh out the programmatic components, we are asking for your thoughts. We do not intend to create this program in a vacuum. We want to tailor this initiative to the needs of the Hartford community to make lasting change.

We recently sent a survey to Hartford alumni to further determine their interest in future opportunities to work with others on practice and policy change to improve the health of older adults. If you are a Hartford alumnus and have not completed the survey, please do so now. It is due Monday, Dec. 10, 2012.

With your help, we hope to bring a grant to the Hartford Trustees in mid-2013 to support you as “AGEnts of Change.”

Thanks in advance.