The ILC enthusiastically commends the Institute of Medicine (IOM) for their recently published report "Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce" which confirms our long-held assertion that -- as the number of older people with complex health needs outpaces the providers with the skills to care for them -- we are headed for an impending crisis: a health care workforce that is too small and critically unprepared to meet the health needs of our nation.
The number of U.S. older adults will nearly double between 2005 and 2030 and, the report says, will add significantly to the already burdened Medicare program. Additionally, this group will be the most diverse the nation has ever seen, making their needs unique from the previous generations Medicare was designed to accomodate.
"Retooling for an Aging America" concludes that we need bold and immediate initiatives, such as exploring ways to attract and retain geriatric specialists (as called for in our publication Preparing for an Aging Nation: The Need for Academic Geriatricians), better training of informal caregivers to tend to the needs of aging family members (a major initiative of our own Caregiving in America project) and as noted in our policy report Redesigning Health Care for an Older America, developing new models of health care delivery to improve on a system that has basically not changed in 40 years.
Making these changes, obviously, calls for a financial commitment. In ILC-CEO Robert N. Butler's new book The Longevity Revolution, he notes that "...the United States spends only about 1 cent of every health care dollar on prevention, but in order to reduce the high costs of illnesses...serious investments should be made in relevant research and scientifically based health promotion and disease prevention."
The IOM report sets a target date of 2030 — the year by which all baby boomers will have turned 65 or older — for the necessary reforms to take place. Additional information on the report can be found at www.iom.edu/agingAmerica.
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 Rising concern about the environment has prompted Earth Day to become Earth Week in some cities, and even Earth Month within certain organizations. The ILC has not turned a blind eye; indeed our recent policy report Redesigning Health Care for an Older America shines light on the many ways in which a healthy environment figures into the diseases of old age that have their origins in utero and infancy.
The report is composed of eight short essays which represent guiding principles toward the evolution of an improved health care delivery system for older persons. The first of them posits that only by taking a "life-course" perspective toward health can we proactively support the healthy aging of the next generation.
This perspective also counters stereotypic and negative images of older persons by fostering an appreciation of the dynamic processes of aging. Health in adulthood is affected by early-life exposure to many adverse factors, including environmental toxins such as lead and tobacco smoke, which can lead to coronary heart disease and diabetes, two of the most serious health risks of older age.
We need more research and better data to understand the implications and connections between early-life exposure to environmental toxins and late-life health status. Fortunately, researchers have already begun to develop data sources. Building programs that support the life-course perspective is a first step toward a system that is proactive rather than reactive, and has both a public health and environmental perspective.
Read More | | Many older people who need long-term care prefer homecare services over care in nursing homes and other institutional settings. Yet finding affordable, quality care is a major issue in the United States. The available pool of family caregivers is shrinking, and at the same time, the caregiving profession is experiencing a severe and worsening shortage of paid caregivers.
This critical lack of family and paraprofessional caregivers for older adults has motivated renewal of the Community College Caregiver Training Initiative for a second year. With funding from MetLife Foundation, The Caregiving Project for Older Americans, a project housed within the ILC-USA, has released a Request for Proposals (RFP) and will award up to twelve $25,000 grants to community colleges to establish new caregiver training programs or to build upon existing programs.
The deadline for submissions is May 15, 2008. At a minimum, planning stages for implementation awarded program must begin by September 2008; full implementation of awarded training program must begin by Spring 2009. Final selection of grantees will be made July 2008.
"Community colleges can play a pivotal role in meeting the increased need for caregiver training," said Sibyl Jacobson, president and CEO, MetLife Foundation. "These grants will offer opportunities for community colleges across the country."
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