Good oral health is critical for older adults and younger adults with disabilities. Poor oral health is largely preventable and linked to a person’s overall health and serious chronic diseases. Unfortunately, older adults and adults with disabilities are at high risk of having poor oral health due to inadequate access to services and certain disabilities that make oral hygiene tasks hard to complete and obtaining services even more difficult.

ACL is working with a contractor to remind Medicare beneficiaries about Medicare Open Enrollment and the availability of volunteers from State Health Information and Assistance Programs (SHIP) to help make the most of Medicare coverage options. The matte release is as follows:

The Administration for Community Living (ACL) awarded a supplemental grant in the amount of $60,000 to the National Ombudsman Resource Center (NORC) to address a number of emerging issues. NORC provides significant training, technical assistance and program management expertise for state and local long-term care ombudsman (LTCO) programs.

Grants totaling $3.75 million over three years were awarded to the National Association of States United for Aging and Disabilities (NASUAD) and the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a) to build business capacity in the aging and disability services networks. Both projects will work together to build on the previous accomplishments of ACL’s business acumen work and to complement other publicly and privately funded technical assistance resource centers addressing this critical issue.

ACL's Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD) recently awarded more than $1.8 million in funding to six states to increase competitive employment outcomes for youth and young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD).

The President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities (PCPID) 2016 Report is now available online.

Acting Assistant Secretary for Aging Edwin Walker announced the first-ever voluntary guidelines for state Adult Protective Services (APS) systems as well as new grants to foster innovation in elder justice during the fall meeting of the Elder Justice Coordinating Council (EJCC).

Final report for the National Quality Forum’s (NQF) Measuring Home and Community-Based Services Quality. NQF, under a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), convened a multi-stakeholder committee to develop recommendations for the prioritization of measurement opportunities to address gaps in home and community-based services (HCBS) quality measurement.

Senior Malnutrition in our country is an epidemic hiding in plain sight. It is estimated that almost 50 percent of older Americans are malnourished. During Malnutrition Awareness week let’s commit to ending this problem.