Age-Friendly Health Systems: Intervention and Implementation Outcomes

hosted by INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing
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About the Event

The age-friendly health systems (AFHS) movement is one of the largest efforts to improve care delivery for older adults, with thousands of healthcare systems recognized as “Age-Friendly.” However, significant questions regarding this movement remain, including how best to implement evidence-based practices and the effect of Age-Friendly transformation on the outcomes of older adults.

Inquiry: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing hosted a special issue on AFHS. This seminar invited AFHS experts to discuss their research in this area with a focus on issues of implementation and intervention effectiveness of AFHS redesign efforts, furthering the field.

Julia Adler-Milstein, PhD, chief of DoC-IT, was among the invited speakers who shared about her ongoing research supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation to build an evidence base for AFHS. 

View the Event Recording

Panel Discussion Questions

  1. There is a growing realization that the tremendous scale and spread of AFHS hasn’t been matched by a growing evidence base. Why do you think this is, and what do you think are the right ways to start addressing this gap?

  2. One particular gap in the evidence is about the Age-Friendly movement itself – how it came to be so widespread, and what principles undergirded this success. What do you think helps explain why this movement has been so successful in terms of its spread, and what do you think we still need to learn?

  3. What do you see as promising opportunities for healthcare policy to support Age-Friendly implementation and sustainment? What do you think is needed in terms of evidence for policymakers?

  4. A key question I think is how to generate relevant evidence. There’s a lot of real-world experimentation with Age-Friendly and the 4Ms, but it’s in such heterogeneous contexts that it’s hard to generalize. Do we need randomized, controlled trials of the 4Ms? If not, what do you think is the best way to generate rigorous evidence?

  5. What do we know so far about Age-Friendly implementation outside the US? What lessons could we learn from evaluation of these initiatives?

  6. There’s an active debate about whether Age-Friendly care should be delivered (and measured) for all other adults, versus in specific populations that might be at highest risk, or most likely to respond. How do you think about this given your experience with Special Needs Plans?

  7. If you had a crystal ball, what do you predict the future of Age-Friendly Health Systems are? What do you think are the critical places of influence to get from here to there?

Featured Speakers

Robert E. Burke MD, MS
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania and Department of Veterans Affairs

Leslie Pelton MPA
Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Julia Adler-Milstein PhD
Professor and Chief, Medicine, University of California, San Francisco

Cheryl Phillips M.D. AGSF
Senior Program Consultant, John A. Hartford Foundation