2015 White House Conference on Aging

The White House released the final report for the 2015 White House Conference on Aging summarizing their work and efforts during this past year. This was also the year that celebrated the 50th anniversary of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Older Americans Act, as well as the 80th anniversary of Social Security.

The sixth White House Conference on Aging had a number of pre-conference activities including, public stakeholder regional meetings, and other avenues for stakeholders to participate in the aging dialogue. This final report summarizes the input and feedback on the four policy areas: retirement security, healthy aging, long term services and supports, and elder justice.

The final report includes an executive summary outlining several themes including looking to the future of aging. The first, is the demographic reality, over 10,000 baby-boomers turn 65 every day, and the fastest growing demographic is women over the age of 85. The second theme, is support of caregivers, both paid and unpaid. The demand for professional caregivers is expected to swell and it raises the policy issues of recruiting and retaining the direct-care workforce. The third theme is the importance of collaboration across sectors. Many of the aging conference events focused on the need to break down the silos between housing, transportation, health care, and long term services and supports, in order to support successful and healthy aging in place.

The report includes a section on what the public and private sectors are doing to support older adults, public input on the four policy areas, and a section on looking to the future that includes the use of technology. In Appendix D it includes policy briefs on the four areas of retirement security, healthy aging, long-term services and supports, and elder justice.

Contact: Cheryl Udell, cudell@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8871