Volume 4, Issue 4
April 30, 2008
Special Edition

Groundbreaking IOM Report Garners Widespread Interest

Dear Hartford Colleagues:

As many of you know, the Institute of Medicine recently released a comprehensive, book-length report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Work Force.  (To see a full copy, as well as an overview and associated fact sheet, please go to: www.iom.edu/CMS/3809/40113/53452.aspx)

The Hartford Foundation was a major sponsor, and numerous grantees either served on the IOM's committee or were instrumental in informing the work. In the first week alone, nearly 100 print and online media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, ABC News, USA Today, and US News and World Report featured the publication and its findings.

Much of the analysis and many of the recommendations of Retooling for an Aging America reflect the strategies or approaches the Foundation and its grantees have pursued during the last 20 years. We look forward to using the report as a framework for collaborating with public policy leaders, health professional schools, professional societies, nonprofit organizations, and other private funders to respond vigorously to the publication's recommendations.

You Can Help
To these ends, we believe the report creates excellent opportunities--both in the short and long term--for you to reach out to the media, local elected officials, colleagues and leaders at your institution or in professional societies, and other interested parties to connect your project or research with the national solutions suggested in the report. 

We encourage you to read through Retooling for an Aging America and consider how it relates to your work.  One concrete task you might do is to talk with your institution's or organization's PR office about reaching out to local media. To that end, we have prepared some brief talking points about the report that may be helpful (see below). You can also go to: www.bandwidthonline.org/pdf/IOM_Report_Messaging.pdf for a more complete, stand-alone resource that includes a detailed set of messages, as well as a list of Hartford-funded programs, usefully referenced according to relevant sections in the report. 

As always, we appreciate your partnership and support in our collective efforts to improve the health and health care of older adults in this country.

Sincerely,

Corinne Rieder, EdD
Executive Director

Tools for Talking about Retooling for an Aging America
The following text suggests language you can use when talking about the report to the media, colleagues, and others in the field.  The first message is a framing statement, meant to point to the positive (and underappreciated) aspects of the unprecedented aging of our country.  The next two recount the basic argument laid out in Retooling for an Aging America, the challenge we as a nation face, as well as three solutions. The last message requires a little work on your part to connect your research or program with a relevant aspect of the report. 

1.  Realizing the Opportunities of an Aging America
There are unprecedented opportunities in what is an increasingly older America. However, if we want to benefit from older adults' continuing commitment to their families, communities, and the country, we need to transform how we care for an expanding group of people who will live--and contribute--for years with multiple chronic health conditions.

2. The Challenge
Retooling for an Aging America argues that the health care workforce lacks both the size and the skill to care for the growing older population and its unique needs. There are not enough geriatric specialists, and generalists do not have enough training and experience to properly treat older patients. Further, today's care models and reimbursement systems are not well matched to the needs of patients with chronic illnesses. 

3. Three Critical Strategies
The report, therefore, lays out a three-pronged strategy with associated recommendations that focuses on:

• Improving all health professionals' ability to deliver geriatric care;
• Increasing the recruitment and retention of geriatric specialists and caregivers; and
• Redesigning models of care and broadening provider and patient roles to achieve greater flexibility.

4. My Program or Research

Here at [add your institution or program], our work/research is providing important insights into [add here] or is testing a new model in training/care that relates directly to Retooling for Aging America and its concern with [add here]. [Again, adapt your message to your work and the relevant issues.]

Looking for More Hartford Information about the Report?

You can find a longer version of these talking points, as well as a list of select Hartford programs helpfully organized according to relevant sections of the report, by going to: www.bandwidthonline.org/pdf/IOM_Report_Messaging.pdf.

For the report itself—as well as an overview, fact sheet, and press release used by the IOM—please go to: www.iom.edu/CMS/3809/40113/53452.aspx

If you have any questions, please write directly to John Beilenson at Strategic Communications & Planning at jbeilenson@aboutscp.com.  Good luck!

Please Note

If you have received this message in error or would like to be taken off this newsletter mailing list, please contact jbeilenson@aboutscp.com.

Jim O’Sullivan coordinates the Report on behalf of the Foundation staff with John Beilenson of Strategic Communications & Planning. If you have items you would like us to mention, please call Jim at 212.832.7788 or contact him at james.osullivan@jhartfound.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

Copyright 2004 The John A. Hartford Foundation