The Roger C. Lipitz Center for Integrated Health Care has been renamed the Roger and Flo Lipitz Center to Advance Policy in Aging and Disability to reflect the Center’s current work and new priorities.
The Center, based in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health Policy and Management, was established in 1998 through a gift from Roger and Flo Lipitz and the Lipitz Family Foundation to catalyze evidence-informed health policy to benefit the lives of people with disabilities and complex health needs. Jennifer L. Wolff, PhD ’03, MHS ’95, has served as the Center’s director since 2018. She is the Eugene and Mildred Lipitz Professor in the Department.
The newly renamed Center’s mission remains the same: to develop and disseminate practical and cost-effective approaches that deliver comprehensive care to persons with complex health needs and disabilities as well as to those who are involved in their care.
“We are grateful for the longstanding commitment of Roger and Flo Lipitz, as well as their family, for their sustained commitment to and interest in improving the lives and well-being of persons who are living with disability and their families,” says Wolff. “We are excited about our new name and our renewed commitment to our mission.”
In its first 25 years, the Center has launched several large initiatives, including the National Health and Aging Trends Study and its linked National Study of Caregiving, the Coalition for Care Partners, Guided Care, a cross-School Health Services and Outcomes Research Training Program for Aging Populations, and the Hopkins Economics of Alzheimer’s Disease and Services Center.
”The newly renamed Roger and Flo Lipitz Center is poised to draw on its longstanding strengths while evolving to meet new needs in the fields of aging and disability,” says Dean Ellen J. MacKenzie, PhD ’79, ScM, ’75. “By advancing innovative policies, the Center will help more people to lead healthier, engaged lives and in the process, support families, strengthen communities, and shape a better future for us all.”
To explore and identify new priorities, the Center embarked on a four-month strategic planning process that engaged the Center’s core faculty and staff. In addition to a new name, a focus emerged on translating evidence into policy through activities such as building partnerships, engaging trainees in practicum and internship opportunities in applied settings with key partners, and growing the Center’s communications.
Roger and Flo Lipitz spent their careers in the field of gerontology and delivery of long-term services and know firsthand the importance of using science to develop effective policy. “Throughout my career, I saw how often policy decisions were either based on anecdotal information or full of biases. Twenty-five years ago, Flo and I decided to change that paradigm by supporting quality research and we remain committed to that mission,” Lipitz says.
The couple and the Center team want to ensure that the policy community and the public understand the Center’s priorities, which is why the new name includes the words policy, aging, and disability. Flo’s name was added, Lipitz explains, in recognition of her career in and contributions to the long-term health care field.
The new strategic plan focuses its priorities across four domains: 1) strengthening the direct care workforce; 2) supporting family caregivers; 3) advancing evidence-based rehabilitative care and long-term services and supports; 4) promoting person- and family-centered systems of care.
Over the next year, the Center is prioritizing building partnerships with policy organizations and connecting students to new internship and practicum opportunities at those organizations, as well as efforts to sustain NIH-Center and training program projects.
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