Today, ADvancing States released its formal recommendations for the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act (OAA). The OAA was last reauthorized in 2016 for a three year period, and ADvancing States encourages Congress to pass a timely reauthorization of the Act during the 2019 legislative session. This document was developed during an extensive state-driven process led by ADvancing States’s Aging and Disability Policy Committee. The committee’s recommendations were then reviewed by the Association’s Board of Directors and were ultimately approved by the membership in May of 2018.
Key recommendations in the platform include:
- Creating new statutory authority for state demonstrations that would enable participating states to try innovative approaches with their OAA funding;
- Granting states with flexibility to determine the distribution of funding for home-delivered meals and congregate nutrition;
- Providing funding and direction for the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research to pilot outcome measurement activities; and
- Enacting technical changes to ensure that the Administration for Community Living is able to equally serve all older adults and persons with disabilities.
We make a number of additional recommendations for ways that the OAA reauthorization can increase state flexibility and provide states with the resources necessary in order to improve the experience of program participants.