PPI Strategic Initiatives

The Public Policy Institute works with external partners and foundations on a range of projects designed to improve care and services available to older Americans. These projects include:

Center to Champion Nursing in America
 
The Center to Champion Nursing in America is an initiative of AARP, the AARP Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Center, a consumer-driven, national force for change, works to increase the nation’s capacity to educate and retain nurses who are prepared and empowered to positively impact health care access, quality, and costs. CCNA’s mission is to ensure all Americans have access to a highly-skilled nurse, when and where they need one. To build and sustain a 21st century nursing workforce with the skills and knowledge Americans need, the Center is working to:

• Strengthen our nation’s educational pathways to prepare the nursing workforce of the future.
• Increase the number and diversity of nurses entering and remaining in the profession.
  
• Remove barriers that limit nurses’ ability to provide the health care consumers need.
• Enhance the influence of nurses in high levels of health care, policy, business and community decision making.
  

Long Term Services and Supports (LTSS) Scorecard

The AARP Public Policy Institute, with the support of the AARP Foundation and its grantors, The Commonwealth Fund and The SCAN Foundation, recently released the first-ever evaluation of state performance delivering long-term services and supports.

The Scorecard, Raising Expectations: A State Scorecard on Long-Term Services and Supports for Older Adults, People with Physical Disabilities, and Family Caregivers, shows some states significantly out-perform others in the delivery of long-term services and supports (LTSS) to older adults and people with disabilities. The study finds, however, that even the best performing states have a long way to go to create a high-performing system of long-term services and supports. The Scorecard ranks performance in four key dimensions: support for family caregivers; ease of access and affordability; choice of setting and provider; and quality of care/quality of life.  

Initiative on the Future of Nursing
 
The Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action is a collaboration created by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the AARP Foundation to ensure that all Americans have access to high quality, patient-centered care in which nurses contribute as essential partners in system-wide transformation.

The Campaign’s purpose is to guide implementation of recommendations of the RWJF Initiative on the Future of Nursing at the Institute of Medicine. With leadership from the RWJF and significant partners from diverse sectors including health care, insurers, consumers, business, government, foundations, and academia, the AARP Public Policy Institute is coordinating the Campaign for Action, convening national and state coalitions and providing technical assistance to create a transformed health care workforce through the implementation of the report recommendations.

For more information: Julia Alexis, jalexis@aarp.org  Or visit: www.thefutureofnursing.org

Family Caregiving Initiative—Professional Partners Supporting Family Caregivers

The AARP Public Policy Institute is leading and coordinating a national initiative to improve the capacity of nurses and social workers to meet the needs of family caregivers. This initiative is made possible by The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation through the AARP Foundation.

Organizations supporting this effort include, the Family Caregiver Alliance, the National Association of Social Workers, U.S. Administration on Aging, the Lewin Group, the Hilltop Institute, Nurses Improving Care to Health System Elders (NICHE), and the American Journal of Nursing.

This project initially identified the knowledge and skills that nurses and social workers need to help family caregivers of older adults—and documented evidenced-based practices that can guide these professionals in their work.  The initiative is currently focused on implementing best practices by:

• Establishing social work standards of practice to support family caregivers.
  
• Implementing a program to train social workers to increase caregiver skills through a caregivers self-questionnaire and tailored resources.
  
• Developing a web-based toolkit (training videos, evidence-based learning module, reference materials) to train nurses in a hospital-based setting.
  
• Seeking to improve public policies related to support of family caregivers and raise consumer expectations for caregiver support.
  

For more information: Rita Choula, Project Administrator, Strategic Initiatives, rchoula@aarp.org