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A White House Conference is a national meeting sponsored by the Executive Office of the President of the United States with the purpose of discussing a topic of importance to the American public. It is typically created by specific legislation. Some conferences last for a day, others for several. Typical attendees include experts in the particular field, community leaders, advocates and citizens with an interest in the issue. The President usually speaks to a conference general session. The conference concludes by issuing a report to the President summarizing and making recommendations for executive or legislative action. The First Lady has sometimes hosted White House conferences. 

The first White House conference was the Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, held in 1909 under President Theodore Roosevelt. The most well-known is the White House Conference on Aging (WHCOA), which has been held once a decade since the 1950s. Three of the major issues that were not dealt with by delegates to the 2005 WHCOA were end-of-life decisions, lifelong learning, and drawing on the wisdom of elders. 

The 2015 WHCOA was held on Monday, July 13, moderated by 56-year old David Hyde Pierce. Showcasing Administration initiatives was high on the agenda. President Obama spoke in the East Room of the White House. His welcoming remarks included “… one of the best measures of a country is how it treats its older citizens. And by that measure, the United States has a lot to be proud of. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are some of our greatest triumphs as a nation. When Social Security was signed into law, far too many seniors were living in poverty… Today, the number of seniors in poverty has fallen dramatically. Every American over 65 has access to affordable health care…” 

Showcasing Administration initiatives was high on the conference agenda; many were expressed in future tense. 

 

• HHS awarded grants of37.5 million to improve care for older adults, through the Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program.
• USDA proposed to permit grocery purchasing and delivery services run by government and non-profit organizations to accept SNAP benefits as payment.
• HHS provided $4 million in new grants for falls prevention.
• The Department of Labor will clarify rules about state-based retirement savings initiatives, including state-administered 401(K) plans, the Treasury's starter savings program, and automatically enrolling employees in IRA's.
• HUD will clarify the Equal Access Rule, which ensures that HUD housing is open to all eligible individuals regardless of actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status, including Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly.

This was the first White House Conference held inside the White House. Assistant Secretary for Aging (fifty-fiveish) Kathy Greenlee believes it was the first time a U.S. President ever mentioned the words "elder abuse." 

 

The bipartisan 3000-member Elder Justice Coalition (EJC is at 1612 K St NW, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20006) had strong praise for the Obama Administration's "significant and historic" actions on elder justice such as a new rule to be issued by the end of 2015 dealing with the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). According to a White House fact sheet released at the conference and available online, the Department of Justice "will revise the current guidelines by clarifying that VOCA assistance funds may be used to support legal services for crime victims, and emphasize the need to use VOCA funds to support social and legal services to underserved victims, including elder victims of abuse, financial exploitation, fraud and neglect." 

EJC National Coordinator Robert Blancato called the new rule "a game changing action which would finally specify that VOCA funds are to be used to help elder abuse crime victims. The additional significance of this is that it comes after Congress lifted the cap on spending under VOCA from $700 million to $2.3 billion." 

It was announced at the WHCOA that: 

 

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will issue a rule that "will update for the first time in nearly 25 years the quality and safety requirements for the more than 15,000 nursing homes and skilled nursing facilities to improve quality of life, enhance person centered care and services for residents in nursing homes, improve resident safety and bring these regulatory requirements into closer alignment with current professional standards."

• The Department of Justice will train elder abuse prosecutors in all 50 states to prosecute effectively elder abuse and financial exploitation and develop online training for law enforcement officers.

• The National Institute of Health will convene a state of the art workshop on elder abuse in the fall to review the science on understanding and preventing abuse, to examine screening tools to identify abuse victims review effective interventions and research in related areas like child abuse and domestic violence that might inform research on elder abuse and focus on gaps and opportunities in this field of research.

• The Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice and its Elder Justice Initiative will fund a multiyear pilot project to evaluate potential means to avoid and respond to elder mistreatment.

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will release before the end of 2015 an advisory to help financial institutions prevent, recognize and report elder financial exploitation.

Grantmakers In Aging CEO John Feather was another invitee-- invitee as opposed to delegate… In My Reflections on the White House Conference on Aging: Celebrating Aging in the Nation's House, he emphasizes that philanthropy plays an important role in fostering new ideas and supporting great work in aging across the country. (Grantmakers in Aging, 2001 Jefferson Davis Highway, Suite 504, Arlington, VA 22202) 

 

The response to my request for information about delegates consisted of “We have not released a list of attendees.” The aging of America is accelerating. It’s time to start planning a conference spanning several days in 2025 with a multitude of representative conferees. 

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A new (2014) book I’ve previously mentioned is Dr. Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In The End. PBS Frontline’s Feb. 10, 2015 program was based on it. Gawande’s fields are journalism, public health, and surgery. He must have been in his late forties when he wrote this book about the modern experience of mortality. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he went to Stanford for his B.S., Oxford for his M.A., and Harvard Medical School. He has been both a MacArthur Fellow and Rhodes Scholar.  

On Friday, September 18, 2015 from 2-4 PM this Frontline documentary will be shown at the North Berkeley Senior Center (1901 Hearst Av. Corner MLK Way.) Following the screening there will be “a facilitated discussion session [that I do not necessarily recommend] for you to participate in and printed material outlining local resources” [August 2015 page 12 The Nugget]. Presumably, there is no charge. If you do not have a pc or you know someone who does not, or if you missed Frontline’s PBS showing in February, this is an opportunity. The book, Frontline program, and DVD are in public libraries’ collections. 

Mortal is an adjective relating to human beings subject to death. It is also used to mean deadly, fatal. Gawande writes, this is a book “…about what it’s like to be creatures who age and die, how medicine has changed the experience and how it hasn’t, where our ideas about how to deal with our finitude have got the reality wrong.” Mainstream doctors are turned off by geriatrics. “…incomes in geriatrics and adult primary care are among the lowest in medicine…a lot of doctors don’t like taking care of the elderly.” 

The field of palliative care emerged over recent decades to bring this kind of thinking to the care of dying patients. …But, he says, it is not cause for celebration. That will be warranted only when all clinicians apply such thinking to every person they touch. No separate specialty required. 

Hospice is a care philosophy based on belief that every person with a life-limiting terminal illness, regardless of age, is entitled to be as free of pain and symptoms as long as possible. But admission to hospice care is restricted. It is currently possible to obtain physician-assisted suicide, albeit not easily, in three states. Popular literature conveys two pictures of hospice-- an at-home service and a building/program elsewhere. It can be confusing. Some people, including “professionals,” assume that hospice provides assisted suicide. 

Dr. Gawande is saying the ultimate goal of medicine should not be a good death, but rather, a good life to the very end, for what matters in the end is the life led.