New Grants Totaling $3.4 Million Approved by JAHF Board of Trustees
The John A. Hartford Foundation Board of Trustees approved new grants totaling $3,355,104 to expand access to community-based palliative care and advance policies that support aging, caregiving and long-term care.
Expanding Access to Community-Based Palliative Care
($2,009,821 for 3 years)
Center to Advance Palliative Care
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) will expand access to standardized, scalable and sustainable community-based palliative care for people living with serious illness across home, nursing home and ambulatory care settings. CAPC will assess the national landscape of community-based palliative care and identify gaps in availability. To support expansion of access and coverage, CAPC will establish program standards across settings; train 5,000 clinicians; provide tools and technical assistance; and work with the National Academy for State Health Policy, the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC), accrediting bodies and payers to advance payment and policy pathways. The project draws directly from a JAHF-funded C-TAC convening in September 2025, which concluded that following decades of palliative care expansion to more than 80 percent of U.S. hospitals, the next critical step is for a national assessment and coordinated strategy to scale community-based palliative care.
Strengthening State Policy to Care for People with Serious Illness
($925,001 for 3 years)
National Academy for State Health Policy
The National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP) will work closely with the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) and the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC) to improve access to community-based palliative care by helping states strengthen supportive policies, including Medicaid payment policies. Building on existing momentum from a prior grant phase, NASHP will conduct policy research, disseminate tools, facilitate state peer learning on communications and model legislation, track and promote state legislative and budgetary actions, and provide education and outreach to policymakers. As a result, up to 25 states will build capacity for community-based palliative care, and five new states will make concrete progress on regulations, policy or payment. Thanks to collaboration with CAPC, NASHP will also incorporate feedback from patients, caregivers and providers into these efforts.
Future of Aging Policy Project
($250,000 for 2 years)
Justice in Aging
Through its Future of Aging Policy Project, Justice in Aging will work in coalition with advocates, experts and researchers to develop a unified, comprehensive, age-friendly policy agenda to present to Congress and the next presidential administration. The policy agenda will reflect priorities including long-term care and caregiving, health care, elder rights and economic security. The project’s Future of Aging Policy Playbook and federal action plans will provide a clear, actionable path forward for policymakers to improve the lives of older adults. This initiative is co-funded by The SCAN Foundation.
WA Cares - Early Evidence on Benefits Use and Medicaid Transitions
($170,282 for 2 years)
Oregon Health & Science University, Center for Health Systems Effectiveness
Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) researchers will study Washington state’s WA Cares program, the nation’s first payroll-funded long-term care insurance program designed to expand access to long-term care. Using quantitative analysis of administrative data, the study will examine who uses the benefit and how, whether the $36,500 lifetime benefit is sufficient, and what happens after benefits are exhausted, including beneficiary transitions to Medicaid. These findings will be further enriched by a separate qualitative evaluation of early implementation (funded by the Commonwealth Fund). Findings will help identify access gaps, inform coordination between WA Cares and Medicaid, and provide evidence for policymakers in other states considering similar long-term care insurance programs for older adults and their family caregivers.
