Eldercare Voices: Health and Aging Policy Fellows – Training Future Leaders to Address Health Care Needs of Older Americans
Harold A. Pincus, MD
While Americans are living longer, healthier lives, many of them face mounting health care and other challenges with advancing age. In the light of profound demographic changes, many of the issues confronting older Americans cannot be solved by research and education alone but require large-scale policy changes at the federal, state, local and even global levels. The Health and Aging Policy Fellows (HAPF) Program was established in 2008 to contribute actively to solutions in the policy arena by educating the next generation of health and aging policy ‘change agents.’ The program is funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation, The Atlantic Philanthropies and the West Health Policy Center. In its eleventh year, the Fellowship Program has had 128 Fellows to date, and is accepting applications through April 15 for the 2019-2020 program year.
and development of healthy aging resources.
The leaders emerging from the HAPF Program possess the knowledge, experience and skills to positively impact health and aging policymaking and have demonstrated that impact both during and after the Fellowship. Many of our alumni have become actively involved in health policy at national and local levels. Many have assumed leadership roles in health care organizations and policy settings inside and outside of government at local, state and national levels, including serving as congressional staff, becoming spokespersons, publishing key papers on major policy issues, and taking on policy and advocacy roles in professional organizations.
Health and Aging Policy Fellows constitute a network of individuals who, individually and collectively, are poised to help shape policies that address the complex health needs of an aging American society. Recent funding from the West Health Institute has enabled us to establish an Alumni Program to support Fellows in collaborating on critical policy issues and continue to make an impact beyond their fellowship year.
The Health and Aging Policy Fellows Program has recently received funding from The John A. Hartford Foundation for another four years of program support. We invite interested individuals to apply for the 2019-2020 class to continue this legacy of excellence! The deadline for applications is April 15, 2019.
For more information about the Health and Aging Policy Fellows Program, please contact the National Program Office: hapfell@nyspi.columbia.edu or 646-774-5495.
Harold Alan Pincus, MD, is Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Psychiatry, Co-Director of the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Pincus also serves as a Senior Scientist at the RAND Corporation. Previously, he was Director of the RAND-University of Pittsburgh Health Institute and Executive Vice Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the National Director of the Health and Aging Policy Fellowship, supported by West Health Institute, The John A. Hartford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. Earlier, Dr. Pincus was Deputy Medical Director of the American Psychiatric Association and founding director of APA’s Office of Research, was the Special Assistant to the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health, and served on White House and Congressional staffs as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar. Dr. Pincus has been appointed to the editorial boards of 12 scientific journals and published over 500 scientific publications in health services research, science policy, research career development, quality of care and the diagnosis, classification and treatment of mental disorders. Dr. Pincus was the 2017 recipient of the C. Charles Burlingame Award by the Institute of Living for outstanding contributions to the field of psychiatry and has received the Menninger Award from the American College of Physicians, among other honors. He worked one evening a week for twenty-two years at a public mental health clinic caring for patients with severe mental illnesses.