Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

WHERE HAVE ALL THE ADVOCATES GONE?

2024; University of Oxford; Volume: 8; Issue: Supplement_1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/geroni/igae098.2092

2399-5300

Robyn Stone,

Legal Education and Practice Innovations

How to build a new foundation for a new generation. In 1978, fresh out of a master's program in aging policy, I came to Washington, D. C., to work for the American Association of Retired Persons/ National Retired Teachers Association. It was an exciting time for aging advocacy. My organization had a clear mission focused on the development of policies and programs that ensured health and economic well-being for all elderly Americans. A wide range of other national organizations advocated for policies and programs to meet the needs of America's elders. In the Congress, the Senate Aging Committee and the House Select Committee on Aging had committed members and a knowledgeable, zealous group of young staffers who worked with the advocates to expand the aging services network and to strengthen health and retirement policies. The executive branch's Administration on Aging was in its heyday, with a significant discretionary budget to support innovative programs like OnLok in San Francisco, the Triage Case Management Program in Connecticut, and other community-based aging services. The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now the Department of Health and Human Services-DHHS) funded a multi-million-dollar research and demonstration initiative-the Channeling Demonstration-to test the efficacy and cost effectiveness of noninstitutional home and community-based care. Twenty-five years later, just as the United States is about to experience the most significant demographic phenomenon in its history-the aging of the baby boomers-advocacy for aging policies and programs at the national level seems to have lost its compass. The Assistant Secretary for Aging in DHHS is little more man a figurehead. As Deputy Assistant Secretary for Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy in the Clinton administration, I struggled to keep aging on the DHHS agenda. The focus was on children, youth, and families; elders were not included. The House Select Committee on Aging is gone. The National Conference of Senior Citizens-the advocacy arm of organized labor-is defunct, the Gray Panthers are rarely heard from, and the Older Women's League, the only organization that advocates specifically for older women, is struggling to survive. AARP (now just the acronym without retired persons in the name) has reinvented itself as an organization representing people over age 50. (I, in fact, started getting my mailings to join AARP when I was 48!) In the following discussion, I identify, then review some of the key issues that must be addressed in reinvigorating aging policy and program advocacy in the twenty-first century. I conclude with some thoughts on how to develop a cadre of advocates to meet the demands of a burgeoning elderly population. WHY HAS ADVOCACY WITHERED? Several factors have contributed to a withering of advocacy for aging policies and programs in the United States. Loss of champions. In the halcyon days of aging advocacy, a number of individuals championed the cause. These included people like Arthur Fleming, the tireless statesman who worked within the governmental system to help create the Administration on Aging, the White House Conferences on Aging, and other venues for supporting aging policies and programs. Claude Pepper, congressman and senator from Florida, consistently supported policies designed to improve the health and long-term care of older people and tried to use his political power and moral persuasion to engage otiier members of Congress. Others worked outside the system. Maggie Kuhn, the gentle lioness who founded the Gray Panthers, was relendess in her advocacy for elders by bringing the generations together. Tish Sommers, a displaced homemaker who post-divorce found herself without adequate resources, developed a grassroots organization that grew into the Older Women's League. These individuals made lifelong commitments to their issues, continuing to advocate for these causes until their deaths. …