New Grants Totaling Over $5.8 Million Approved by JAHF Board of Trustees
The John A. Hartford Foundation Board of Trustees has approved funding for six grants totaling up to $5,863,764 to spread age-friendly care, support family caregivers and increase access to serious illness care.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Yale University: Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative (GEDC) 3.0 - Expanding Dissemination and Enhancing Evaluation ($1,606,071 for 2 years)
Two grants will support the Geriatric Emergency Department Collaborative (GEDC) to expand its education, practice support and evaluation activities. The GEDC will conduct regional and site-specific training for Veterans Health Administration, Indian Health Service and New York State emergency departments and outreach to rural and safety net hospitals. The GEDC includes an interdisciplinary faculty, 46 current member sites and four national organizations: American College of Emergency Physicians, American Geriatrics Society, Emergency Nurses Association and the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. The John A. Hartford Foundation partners with the West Health Institute to support the GEDC.
The Age-Friendly Institute: Promoting an Age-Friendly Ecosystem - Harnessing Consumer Insights to Advance “Age-Friendly” in Health Care and Across Settings ($1,500,000 for 3 years)
A grant to the Age-Friendly Institute will support a three-year initiative to increase consumer understanding and drive demand for age-friendly care. The Age-Friendly Institute operates agefriendly.org, a crowd-sourced, online resource utilizing user-generated ratings and reviews to empower older adults to demand age-friendly communities, services and care where they live and work. This project will support the development of an Age-Friendly Ecosystem by creating a digital hub and partnerships with stakeholders involved in the movements to make health systems, public health systems, cities, universities and employers more age-friendly.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Engaging Family Caregivers through Shared Access to the Electronic Health Record ($1,476,784 for 3 years)
This project implements a demonstration in three health systems to increase the uptake and use of shared electronic health record access by family caregivers of older adults, evaluate its effects and disseminate best practices to promote national adoption. Because millions of older adults manage their health with the help of family caregivers, it is imperative they have shared access to the electronic health record. This work builds on a planning grant with researchers at Johns Hopkins University and leaders of the OpenNotes movement at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Health Careers Futures: Revisiting the Teaching Nursing Home ($594,110 for 2 years)
This grant will implement an updated version of the Teaching Nursing Home model in three regions of Pennsylvania to demonstrate how enhanced partnerships between academic nursing schools and skilled nursing facilities can improve quality and cost outcomes. The project will draw upon existing resources from the Age-Friendly Health Systems initiative while integrating lessons learned and partnerships created through the COVID-19 pandemic and the original Teaching Nursing Home model implementation from the 1980s. The Pennsylvania State University College of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing) and University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing are each providing faculty and educational support. The Jewish Healthcare Foundation co-funds this initiative.
Convergence Center for Policy Resolution: Convergence Dialogue on Reimagining Care for Older Adults ($453,777 for 15 months)
This 15-month project will assess the perspectives, values and vision of key and diverse stakeholders, develop areas of agreement and create an implementation and dissemination plan for public support of consensus-based recommendations to reimagine the care of older adults in nursing homes and the range of settings they call home. This project follows a December 2020 Convergence Center report funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation exploring options and opportunities for change. The SCAN Foundation co-funds this project.
FAIR Health: A National Initiative to Advance Cost Information in Shared Decision-Making for Serious Health Conditions ($233,022 for 1.5 years)
This project will develop, test and plan dissemination of shared decision-making tools to help older adults and their family caregivers understand cost information for treatment options based on clinical evidence while balancing risks and outcomes aligned with their preferences and values. The project’s four-phased approach includes: needs assessment/gap analysis, development of shared decision-making tools for older adults, evaluation of these tools and testing for a broader dissemination campaign. FAIR Health is a national, independent nonprofit organization that serves as an independent source of health care cost data with more than 32 billion private insurances claims on record from over 60 payers.
