Volume 2, Issue 3
December 20, 2005

In This Issue

1. Hartford Trustees Award New Grants (December 2005)
2. Groundbreaking Hospital-at-Home Study Published
3. Experience: A New Social Work Publication
4. 2005 Social Work Doctoral Fellows Announced
5. Exceptional Nursing Programs Receive Curriculum Awards
6. News from Hartford Foundation Staff
7. Communications Tip: Letters to the Editor That Get Published

1. The trustees of the JAHF recently approved the following major grants.

Clinical Service Challenge Grants
$775,000
Two Years

Summary
Five academic health centers have been awarded two-year challenge grants to test innovations in geriatric health care. The innovations, based at sites that participate in the Foundation's Centers of Excellence for Geriatric Medicine Training program, will also provide enhanced venues for teaching geriatrics to medical students and residents. Selected through a competitive process, these five CoEs will use the clinical models to demonstrate enhanced teaching and training, and increase interest in geriatrics. They will also assess their didactic effectiveness, as well as the model's potential for sustainability and dissemination.

Additional Information
The Hartford Foundation's Centers of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine program was founded in 1988 to meet the need for physician-faculty trained to prepare physicians in the health care needs of older adults. In 2004, three additional centers in geriatric medicine and two new centers in geriatric psychiatry were funded. There are currently 24 centers located around the nation.

Boston Medical Center
Boston , MA
Rebecca A. Silliman, MD
$155,000, Two Years

Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore , MD
Samuel C. Durso, MD
$155,000, Two Years

Mount Sinai Medical Center
New York , NY
Rosanne M. Leipzig, MD
$155,000, Two Years

University of California , Los Angeles
Los Angeles , CA
$155,000, Two Years
David B. Reuben, MD

University of California , San Francisco
San Francisco , CA
C. Bree Johnston , MD , MPH
$155,000, Two Years

The ASCO Foundation
Alexandria , VA
$290,033
Three Years

Summary
Given our aging demographics and the fact that cancer is ten times more prevalent in adults over the age of 65, the Foundation made a grant to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) to grow the next generation of researchers while promoting the exchange of ideas and awareness of geriatric oncology. With this grant, ASCO will fund two Young Investigator Awards, facilitate geriatric retreats at the annual ASCO meetings and sponsor a new annual B.J. Kennedy Award and Lecture for Scientific Excellence in Geriatric Oncology.

Additional Information
In prior awards, ASCO sponsored geriatric symposia and retreats, and funded 10 geriatric-oncology joint training centers in order to create new leaders in the field. A geriatric oncology curriculum was also published and has sold nearly 300 copies.

Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs (ADGAP), Inc.
New York , NY
$258,559
Three Years

Summary
The Foundation awarded a grant to the Association of Directors of Geriatric Academic Programs, for expansion of a longitudinal study of the status of the geriatric medicine workforce. The grant will update and maintain project infrastructure, provide funding to expand primary data collection through six new national geriatrics workforce surveys, and enhance national dissemination of study findings and resources. As the central and most authoritative source of information about geriatric medicine training, the grant will help provide a means for measuring the impact of programs such as those funded by this and other foundations, and by other federal funding authorities.

Additional Information
The first two phases of this project were supported by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, and compiled high quality data on many aspects of geriatrics education for students, residents, fellows and practicing physicians.

Strategic Communications and Planning
Wayne , PA
$676,140
Three Years

Summary
The Communications and Dissemination Initiative Expansion will continue to provide direct consultation to grantees, hold annual cross-disciplinary conferences for faculty scholars and principal investigators, give consultations to Foundation staff, and oversee the publication of the e-newsletter, Hartford Foundation Report .

The project will also support the creation of a Web-based communications resource, Foundation outreach to media, strategic utilization of the Foundation's 75 th Anniversary publications, and assistance for grantee's dissemination planning.

Additional Information
John Beilensen is President of Strategic Communications and Planning, a communications consulting and planning firm in Wayne , PA. The Foundation's Communications and Dissemination Initiative has been funded since 1999 to help grantees and staff successfully promote and communicate their work to diverse audiences.

2. Groundbreaking Hospital-at-Home Study Published

A Johns Hopkins University study published in the December 6, 2005 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine , and funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation, found that a new model that provides acute hospital care in a patient's home-called Hospital at Home-was a safe, viable, and cost-effective alternative for older patients.

The study, conducted at hospitals in Buffalo, NY, Worcester, MA, and Portland, OR, began with patients 65 and older who required acute care for four common conditions-pneumonia, chronic heart failure, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and cellulitis. Given the choice of admission to the hospital or receiving Hospital at Home, more than three in five chose to receive care in their homes. Hospital at Home includes daily visits by and 24/7 availability of doctors, initial one-on-one nursing care followed by multiple daily nursing visits, and professionally administered tests (e.g., EKGs and X-rays), IV treatments, and oxygen therapy. When patients recovered, they were "discharged" back into the care of their primary doctors.

The study found that the Hospital at Home patients had timely access to a doctor and nurse, actually received more nursing attention than in the hospital, and had a lower chance of developing delirium, requiring sedatives, or needing chemical restraints. In future research, the Hospital at Home team hopes to show that the model can also address the safety and other problems older adults face in care transitions as they move from the hospital to home or to another health care setting.

3. Experience: A New Social Work Publication

In November 2005, the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Initiative published its first edition of Experience Exciting Careers in Social Work and Aging , a magazine about careers in gerontological social work. The magazine, featuring the stories of current social workers in the aging field, is designed to broaden social work students' understanding of older adults and social work services to older clients, and to describe the benefits of a career in aging. To download a copy of the magazine, go to: www.gswi.org/CSW0908.pdf . For print copies, contact Linda Harootyan at harooty@geron.org.

4. 2005 Social Work Doctoral Fellows Announced

Six outstanding social work students have been chosen as the newest recipients of the Hartford Doctoral Fellowship, a program funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation and administered by The Gerontological Society of America. Recipients will each receive a $50,000 dissertation grant plus $20,000 in matching support from their home institutions that will enable them to more fully concentrate on their dissertation research projects over the next two years. The fellows are:

Gretchen E. Alkema
University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology
"Translating Research Into Practice: A Community-Based Medication Management Intervention"

Keith A. Anderson
University of Kentucky, Center for Gerontology, College of Public Health
"Death in the Nursing Home: An Empirical Examination of the Grief Experiences of Nursing Assistants"

Nancy Giunta
University of California, Berkeley, School of Social Welfare
"Caregiver Support Programs and Policies: A Mixed Methods Evaluation of Implementation Efforts in 50 States"

Marylin Denise King
University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Social Work
"Religious Coping, Formal Service Use, and Gain Among African American Caregivers of Persons with Alzheimer's Disease"

James Masten
New York University, School of Social Work
"Aging with HIV/AIDS: The Experience of Gay Men in Late Middle-Age"

Amanda K. Toler
University of Michigan, School of Social Work
"Social Support and Patterns of Formal and Informal Help Use for Mental Disorders: Understanding the Effect of Age Using the National Survey of American Lives"

For more information about the fellowship program, visit: www.gswi.org/newfellows_oct2005.htm.

5. Exceptional Nursing Programs Receive Curriculum Awards

The John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing, in collaboration with the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), has announed the winners of the 2005 Awards for Baccalaureate Education in Geriatric Nursing. Now in its eighth year, this national awards program honors nursing programs that exhibit exceptional, substantive, and innovative baccalaureate curriculum on geriatrics. Programs must also demonstrate relevance in the clinical environment and have the ability to be replicated at schools of nursing across the country. Awards were presented in four separate categories:

Geriatric Faculty Member Award
Virginia Burggraf, DNS, RN, FAAN, Radford University (VA)

Infusing Geriatrics into the Curriculum Award
Fairfield University (CT)

Clinical Settings in Geriatric Nursing Award
Grand Valley State University (MI)

Stand-Alone Baccalaureate Geriatric Course Award
Hawaii Pacific University (HI)

For more information about the awards, visit: www.aacn.nche.edu/Media/NewsReleases/2005/HartInnAwards.htm.

6. News from Hartford Foundation Staff

Congratulations to Program Officer Rachael Watman, who gave birth on December 9, 2005 to a boy, Westley Thomas Watman. Rachael will be on maternity leave for the first few months of 2006. Gavin Hougham and Jim O'Sullivan will share responsibility for her grants during that time.

In other Foundation staff news, Jim O'Sullivan, program officer, was promoted to senior program officer at the December 2005 board meeting.

7. Communications Tip: Letters to the Editor That Get Published

In thinking about how to publicize research results or new programs we often forget about letters to the editor. Writing a letters to the editor can be a powerful way to get your story in the media. Nancy Schwartz of the marketing and communications firm, Nancy Schwartz & Company, offers two resources on writing letters to the editor that get published. Part One outlines the key steps to take to write a powerful letter to the editor while Part Two proffers best practices from letter to the editor expert Mila Rosenthal, Amnesty International USA's (AISUA) Director, Business and Human Rights Program. To access these resources, visit: www.nancyschwartz.com/letters_to_the_editor.html and www.nancyschwartz.com/nonprofit_letters_to_the_editor.html.

Copyright 2004 The John A. Hartford Foundation