GSA Members Call on Senate to Strengthen Health Promotion Programs for Older Adults
Speaking today at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, Gerontological Society of America members Dawn Carr, PhD, FGSA, and Susan L. Hughes, PhD, FGSA, told lawmakers that they need to expand the scope of United States aging policy to ensure that as Americans age, we have access to the services and supports we need to thrive.
The hearing, titled “Improving Wellness Among Seniors: Setting a Standard for the American Dream,” was the first convened by the committee in the new 119th Congress, with Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) as chair and Senator Kirsten Gillebrand (D-NY) as ranking member.
“Health problems in later life are strongly influenced by events, exposures, and behaviors that occur well before we reach our later years,” said Carr, director of the Claude Pepper Center at Florida State University. "Although the consequences of regular harmful exposures and habitual behaviors accumulate to erode health over time, there is growing evidence that if we intervene during critical inflection periods, we can modify health trajectories and bolster physiological resilience as we age.”
In her testimony, Carr added that creating a society enriched by a large group of healthy older people will require a new framework for aging policy, guided by several key principles: an emphasis on health maintenance at every stage of life targeting risks related to aging-associated diseases and disabilities; acknowledgement of the developmental changes that occur as people move into and through later life, including the way older adults’ unique strengths benefit society; and an emphasis on the barriers to healthy aging that result in significant inequalities in health outcomes as people age.
Testimony from Hughes, who serves as the founding director of the Center for Research on Health and Aging at the University of Illinois Chicago, addressed the limitations of current funding for health promotion programs for older adults and recommended a transformational re-thinking of the nation’s current focus on acute and post-acute care. She noted that despite overwhelming evidence supporting the importance of physical activity for healthy aging, participation in and maintenance of physical activity is still sub-optimal in the U.S.
“At a minimum, we need to reauthorize the Older Americans Act. We also need to increase funding for Title III D and create a new title explicitly for physical activity programming,” Hughes said. “Ultimately, however, we will see much bigger returns if we develop demonstrations and/or regulations or reimbursement mechanisms that support the dissemination of and access to evidence-based health promotion programs as extensively as possible through Medicare.”
###
The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) is the nation's oldest and largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to research, education, and practice in the field of aging. The principal mission of the Society — and its 5,500+ members — is to advance the study of aging and disseminate information among scientists, decision makers, and the general public. GSA’s structure includes a nonpartisan public policy institute, the National Academy on an Aging Society, and GSA is also home to the National Center to Reframe Aging and the National Coordinating Center for the Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research.