News
Blog Highlights the Value AAAs Bring to Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Effort
- By: USAging
- On: 04/21/2017 09:37:10
- In: Hot Topics in Aging
Terry Fulmer, PhD, RN, FAAN, President of The John A. Hartford Foundation, has penned a new blog for the Aging and Disability Business Institute on the innovative collaborations happening between the Health Resources & Services Administration's Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP) sites and Area Agencies on Aging.
The GWEP program was established in 2015 to develop a health care workforce that maximizes patient and family engagement and improves health outcomes for older adults by integrating geriatrics with primary care. Over half of the active GWEP sites are working directly with AAAs to capitalize on their community knowledge and expertise in service delivery for the older adult population.
Fulmer recently spoke at an American Society on Aging (ASA) conference session that highlighted the WE HAIL GWEP site, housed at the University of North Texas, and its partnership with the United Way of Tarrant County AAA. Her session comments, echoed in the blog, emphasized that AAAs, and other community-based organizations (CBOs), are natural GWEP partners and can begin to frame themselves as key contributors to an accelerating primary care transformation.
The post ends with a call to arms for CBOs and their academic partners to collect data on how their efforts are moving the needle on care quality and cost savings metrics, and publish these outcomes far and wide to build the evidence base and bolster support for future collaborations.