OlderCouple_496398699The Trustees of the John A. Hartford Foundation approved three grants totaling more than $3.28 million last week that we believe will lead to fundamental, long-term changes in the way care is delivered to older adults.

We renewed and expanded our work to ensure that the voices of older adults and aging-expert professionals are influencing debates about health care delivery through advocacy; we are supporting the development of quality measures and performance standards that support integrated, patient-centered, goal-based care that helps people to achieve their priority outcomes; and through the collaborative ReFraming Aging Initiative, we will counter the pervasive negative beliefs about aging that are barriers to improving the care of older people.

Under our Policy and Communications portfolio, the Board approved a three-year, $1.5 million renewal grant that will expand the partnership between aging-expert health care professionals and consumer advocates in the Voices for Better Health initiative. This project of Community Catalyst, a nonprofit, Boston-based health care advocacy organization, is working to ensure that integrated health plans for dually eligible Medicare/Medicaid individuals deliver high-quality care to this low-income, vulnerable population.

Community CatalystCommunity Catalyst, has been an excellent partner to our John A. Hartford Foundation Change AGEnts initiative and our whole network of grantees, helping them deploy their geriatrics expertise in new ways—as advocates who, in partnership with consumers, are meeting with state Medicaid offices, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and health plans to push them on complex issues related to the quality of care being delivered. Building on Community Catalyst’s new Center for Consumer and Community Engagement, which is being supported by The Atlantic Philanthropies, our renewal grant will also be used to engage aging-expert health care professionals in advocacy focused on other financing and care delivery changes happening at the federal and state level.

NCQAlogo300pIn partnership with The SCAN Foundation, the Board also approved a two-year, $1.2 million renewal grant to the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) , a national nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC that develops quality standards and performance measures for health care entities. Two related projects that fit perfectly in our Tools and Measures for Quality Care portfolio will improve the care of vulnerable older adults, especially those with multiple chronic conditions.

First, the NCQA will develop and pilot test accreditation standards for the coordination of long-term supports and services in health plans and community-based organizations. These standards will be focused on achieving person-centered care that revolves around the goals of the older adult and their family. The second project represents a second phase in a longer-term effort to develop performance measures for health plans focused on the outcomes older adults identify as important. These measures will be designed for eventual use in NCQA accreditation programs, and by states and CMS. Together, these projects will meet the need for quality measures that assess how well organizations provide integrated, patient-centered, goal-based care that helps people to achieve their priority outcomes.

Finally, the Board also approved a three-year, grant of a little over $515,000 to continue support of the ReFraming Aging initiative. The initiative represents a collaboration of eight major aging organizations: AARP, the American Federation for Aging Research, the American Geriatrics Society, the American Society on Aging, the Gerontological Society of America, the National Council on Aging, the National Hispanic Council on Aging, and Grantmakers in Aging, which serves as the fiscal home for the project. In addition to the collaborating organizations, six foundations are supporting the initiative.

The collaborating organizations are working with a communications research firm, the FrameWorks Institute, which has completed the first phase of the initiative that studied how the public, media, and experts currently think and talk about aging issues (it’s not good, as I noted in an earlier Health AGEnda post).

In the second phase, FrameWorks will develop counter-messages and alternative ways to talk about aging issues and older adults. Through a coordinated campaign, we will all receive tools and resources that will help us “re-frame” the public’s understanding of aging to motivate action by policymakers, health systems leaders, and other decision-makers.

We are excited about these projects that have the potential to radically change how health care policies are made, how quality in care is measured, and how we all think and talk about aging—all of which will drive forward improvements in the care of older adults.