CEO Blog

GSA’s deep commitment to a caring and competent workforce that supports our aging population was perhaps most visible when it served as a co-founder of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance in 2009. This alliance was formed in response to the landmark Institute of Medicine report “Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce.”

Scientific research in this area continues to develop, and now GSA scholars are in the spotlight again with the latest issue of our journal The Gerontologist, titled “Workforce Issues in Long-Term Care.”

I had the opportunity to showcase GSA’s work on Reframing Aging during a recently convened Age-Friendly Ecosystem Summit hosted by The George Washington University’s Center for Aging, Health and Humanities. The two-day meeting included age-friendly success stories from the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Regional leaders advancing age-friendly programs in the District of Columbia, Montgomery County and Hyattsville, Maryland, and Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia, provided examples of how the many facets of the Age-Friendly Ecosystem are evolving.

GSA has teamed-up with several other organizations to address the challenges presented by the bacterium Clostridioides difficile — or C. difficile as it’s commonly abbreviated. Over the past year, I have had the privilege of representing GSA on the Steering Committee of the C. difficile Awareness Initiative, which was formed in response to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deeming this infectious disease an urgent public health threat.

When the pandemic unfolded last year, my admiration for the GSA membership was once again reaffirmed when our newly formed GSA COVID-19 Task Force and existing National Adult Vaccination Program Workgroup began rolling out an impressive array of resources to help all of us make sense of emerging information about COVID-19 and its impact on older adults.

And it’s important to know their work is continuing, and updates have been made to existing tools as we gain new knowledge, particularly in the area of vaccines.

The National Advisory Council on Aging (NACA), which meets three times annually, will convene again on Wednesday, May 12. Members of the scientific community and public are invited to join the open portion of the meeting, which will take place via live videocast from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET. The agenda is available to view online.