A Missing Piece in the Infrastructure to Promote Healthy Aging Programs: Education and Work Force Development

摘要

There are compelling data available, both for the rapidly expanding older adult population, and for the value of evidence-based health promotion and disease management programs (EBHPs). The systems approach to transforming our aging services delivery system has been brilliant, but there is an important system missing – our educational system. Building the infrastructure to create embedded and accessible healthy aging programs must take into account workforce preparation. Most of the people currently working in the aging services delivery system are doing so without the benefit of any formal education or an organized course of study about older adults and aging services. For the state of California, 61% of aging services agencies reported zero current staff with formal gerontology education, defined as having had even one academic course in aging content (1). In a national study, less than half (46.6%) of responding Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs) had at least one staff with either a certificate or degree in gerontology and almost 27% have an Evidence-Based Program (EBP) Coordinator position (2, 3). There was no data reported on aging services workforce preparedness in program planning, implementation, and evaluation of EBHP, even for the EBP Coordinator positions.