2014 Annual Scientific Meeting

  • 1.  White House Conference on Aging Listening Session

    Posted 10-01-2014 10:45 AM

    As you may know, the White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA) will take place sometime next year. The White House has held this event each decade since the 1960s to focus on national aging policy. The conference is meant to be visionary-setting out ideas for the next decade.

    GSA is very lucky to have Nora Super, the WHCoA's Executive Director, attend this year's Annual Scientific Meeting to conduct a listening session on the four primary topics that have been identified for WHCoA: (1) retirement security, (2) long-term services and supports, (3) healthy aging, and (4) realizing the vision of the Elder Justice Act.

    The session-open to all attendees-will be held on Friday, November 7th, 5:00pm-6:30pm, and will feature short presentations from a panel of four GSA members (details forthcoming) who will summarize the state-of-our-knowledge and present one or two "actionable ideas" for each key topic.

    To help the panelists represent the voice of GSA, we encourage you to post your ideas here-so that the panelists may use them to inform their presentations.

    Building upon the listening session, and the ideas submitted in this online forum, GSA also plans to develop a policy brief that will be submitted to the WHCoA in early 2015.

    What do you think are the key issues and recommendations GSA should focus on with regard to the WHCoA's primary topics?

    We look forward to hearing what you have to say!

    Greg

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    Greg O'Neill
    Director
    National Academy on an Aging Society
    Washington DC
    (202)842-1275
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  • 2.  RE: White House Conference on Aging Listening Session

    Posted 10-06-2014 10:20 AM
    I would like suggest that the White House conference listening session include the issue of the widespread use of antipsychotic drugs in U.S. nursing homes as chemical restraint of residents, particularly those with dementia.

    Here is the link to the submission my organization recently made to the United Nations, for the 2015 review of the United States' human rights record, on this pervasive problem: http://www.nursinghome411.org/?articleid=10085. Despite longstanding standards requiring that nursing homes avoid unnecessary medications and the FDA black-box warning against using these drugs on people with dementia, approximately one in five nursing home residents are still given these drugs inappropriately.

    This is undoubtedly a significant issue in other elder care settings as well, including assisted living and HCBS.  However, there are significant challenges to collecting data on care in those settings and thus little is known (besides anecdotal reports).

    Thank you for your consideration.

    Richard

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    Richard Mollot
    Executive Director
    Long Term Care Community Coalition
    New York NY
    (212)385-0355
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