New Initiatives

Healthy Aging Collaborative:
New Perspectives on Growing Old

Mission: Bring together leading experts in the field of aging as a forum through which to exchange ideas to create a multidisciplinary, inclusive approach to public health policy on the issue of healthy aging.

JBS has teamed with the Nation's leading experts in the field of aging to establish the Healthy Aging Collaborative. The Collaborative plans to use its collective expertise to conduct research on key issues to inform policy debate, establish forums to gain a better understanding of key issues, explore policy issues in more depth, create a platform for building consensus on public policy issues, and develop and recommend multidisciplinary approaches to keeping people independent and fully functional for as long as possible. The core issues the Collaborative will focus on are:

• Healthy or Vital Aging. A working definition is to achieve and maintain a state of physical and mental well-being so that life can be lived to the fullest, and so that individuals can remain independent and live with dignity as long as possible. This also includes the issue of adequate health insurance coverage.
  
• Continuum of Community Care Environments. The goal of vital aging cannot be realized without a continuum of supportive community environments including housing, long-term care, little ageism/stigma, supportive of those with disabilities, elder-friendly, offering protective services, safe, and with social activities and supports.
  
• Coordination and Financing of Medical and Behavioral Health Services. For purposes of planning future policy research, the Collaborative will consider the problems arising from the integration of chronic disease, prescription drug use, alcohol use, and mental health issues; and the potential for misuse or abuse, especially among older baby boomer cohorts.
  
• Measuring and Monitoring Outcomes. The scope of any monitoring system begins with the individual and moves out to the provider, health plan, the whole community, and then larger State and Federal service systems.