The White House Conference on Aging, the once-a-decade meeting of stakeholders who set the national course for U.S. aging policy, was noticeably different this time. Unlike past conferences, Congress failed to provide funding, so the July event was modified from multiday workshops to a single, daylong meeting. Policy priorities were predetermined, following a year of administration-led listening tours and town hall sessions. Another difference: nurses weren't invited to play a role in discussions.
The conference concentrated on five main issues-family caregiving, elder justice, financial security, intergenerational connections, and technology-with President Obama calling for more support for caregivers. A fact sheet on the conference can be read at http://1.usa.gov/1UUmqPw; the news release announcing the event (http://1.usa.gov/1Txu7d0) highlighted several topics:
* Fall prevention. Preventable injuries like falls affect one in three older adults annually. A free online course from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will offer continuing education credits to make fall prevention a routine part of clinical care.
* Aging in place. The National Aging and Disability Transportation Center is set to launch this fall and aims to increase older patients' access to care and ability to travel to medical appointments and reduce the social isolation that often comes with aging. And Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits can now be used to pay for services like Meals on Wheels.
* Elder abuse. One in 10 older adults is subjected to physical or emotional abuse; that number nearly doubles when financial abuse is included, and often such abuse is committed by a spouse or adult child. Depression, a loss of appetite, scratches and bruises, or comments by patients about withdrawing large sums of money are all possible signals of abuse.
* Nursing homes and dementia. Proposals were made for an update-the first in 25 years-to quality and safety requirements for more than 15,000 nursing homes, development of a training curriculum to bolster detection of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and improvements in care of affected patients, and funding for training programs to expand geriatrics education and prepare health professionals to respond to age-related needs.
Participants represented family caregivers, home health aides, policymakers, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector-but not nurses, despite the fact that they will be directly affected by many of the policy goals and programs, especially the push to help seniors age in place.
"It's incredibly distressing to see, over and over again, nurses' expertise on health and health care being ignored," said Diana Mason, president of the American Academy of Nursing. She points out that nurse experts have developed successful, innovative models of care for older adults and are leaders in transforming health care systems to improve health, well-being, and independence, all of which keep seniors out of nursing homes. Many of these innovations were made with substantial funding from the National Institutes of Health, among others. By not capturing the innovative work of nurses, Mason says, the White House Conference on Aging has missed an important opportunity to consider those innovations and the nursing perspectives on care for the elderly. "Nursing is the largest health profession in the United States-you can't transform health care without us."-Liz Seegert, MA