It now focuses on three priority areas: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers and improving serious illness, and end-of-life care.
"[5] In the early and mid-20th century, the foundation primarily made grants for research centered on basic and clinical medicine and health care quality and costs.
She serves as the chief strategist for the foundation, and her vision for better care of older adults is influencing the Age-Friendly Health Systems social movement.
[7] She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and recently served on the independent Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes established to advise the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Prior, she served as the Erline Perkins McGriff Professor and Founding Dean of the New York University College of Nursing.
These family caregivers frequently perform heroic tasks, but are often invisible in our health care system and receive little preparation and support.
The John A. Hartford Foundation will continue to promote care that preserves dignity and honors the wishes of older adults and their families.
From about 1980 to 2012, the foundation focused on a two-pronged effort to build training capacity and conduct research into different models of care for older adults at schools of medicine, nursing, and social work.
In 2015 and 2016, [13] the foundation implemented its current priority areas: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers, and improving serious illness and end-of-life care.
[14] In 2008, the foundation led a consortium of grantmakers to fund a study from the Institute of Medicine to look at the "crisis" of an ill-prepared workforce and outdated models of caring for older adults.
"[15] In order to grow the geriatric workforce, JAHF has helped to develop training programs across various disciplines, from university-based physicians to nurses and social workers.
The hope has been to establish a strong interdisciplinary labor force that is well-trained clinically and well-equipped academically to further geriatric research and care.
[16] The Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars in Aging Research Program was launched in 1994, in partnership with Atlantic Philanthropies, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Starr Foundation.
[21] Separate from the foundation’s support of geriatric training, there were multiple studies done on promoting the interdisciplinary nature of care teams.
Beyond just physicians and nurses, these teams also included social workers and others, and were especially effective for managing those with complex conditions and multiple comorbidities.
Since then, JAHF has helped make tremendous progress, with more than 7,000 geriatricians certified by 2010 and geriatrics integrated into almost all medical curricula and board certification requirements across the country.
This training is not just limited to physicians and nurses, JAHF has sought to bring geriatrics into the professional education of all health workers on some level.
As more evidence proves the effectiveness of these models, the spotlight is now on the policy work needed to secure reimbursements and scale up these programs.