Recap: WHCOA, Healthy Aging Summit

This month has been a whirlwind of exciting activity and announcements for the Administration on Aging and the Administration for Community Living as a whole. We celebrated the 50th anniversaries of the Older Americans Act and Medicare and Medicaid and the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which together with Social Security (which will celebrate its 80th anniversary in August), help enable older adults to live their later years in the homes and communities they choose.

This month, we also celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Area Agency on Aging network at the annual conference of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging. And, of course, July included the sixth White House Conference on Aging, which brought together an unprecedented number of older adults, aging advocates, state and federal partners, community organizations, foundations, and private companies to address the needs of seniors and their families today and into the future. The conference, along with the Healthy Aging Summit earlier this week, also gave us the chance to share updates on a number of programs with our partners in the aging network.

In case you missed them, here’s a quick list:

White House Conference on Aging Announcements

Falls prevention: ACL announced the recipients of our 2015 Falls Prevention Grants and the expansion of falls prevention programs by WellMed and Kaiser Permanente. We shared plans for promoting the 2015 Falls Prevention Awareness Day in September, which will be the largest ever and include participation from all 50 states for the first time. We also previewed the launch of a Falls Prevention Toolkit for Pharmacists, a joint endeavor by the National Council on Aging and the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists that is supported by the ACL and the CDC.

Transportation: We shared information about an exciting collaboration between ACL and the Federal Transit Administration, which awarded challenge grants to 16 communities to spur development of sustainable, scalable programs that provide transportation to healthcare services.

Elder justice: We shared research briefs drawn from an evaluation of the development and implementation of programs funded by ACL’s Elder Abuse Prevention Interventions Program. We provided an update on the design of the National Adult Maltreatment Reporting System, which will be completed in September. We launched the National Voluntary APS System Guidelines Development Project, with a draft of the guidelines provided for public comment and a series of listening sessions planned for August and September. We also announced the summer start of ACL’s comprehensive evaluation of state Long-Term Care Ombudsman programs, and shared an update on the implementation of the new federal rule for LTCO programs, which take effect in 2016.

Retirement Security: ACL’s National Resource Center on Women and Retirement Planning, operated by the Women’s Institute for Secure Retirement, is partnering with the Retirement Clearinghouse on a pilot program to help low- and moderate-income workers better manage their retirement savings.

Healthy Aging Summit

At the Healthy Aging Summit, ACL shared the 2015 Falls Free® National Falls Prevention Action Plan, which was developed by the National Council on Aging’s National Falls Prevention Resource Center based on key recommendations and evidence-based strategies identified by experts during the Falls Prevention Summit, which was hosted by the White House Conference on Aging in April. (The National Falls Prevention Resource Center is supported by a grant from ACL.)

Learn more about these announcements.