Over the past seven months, I have had the privilege of interning at Archstone Foundation. Even though I was unable to physically be at the office with colleagues, I was instantly welcomed to the team and invited to join a range of projects, including site visits, grant reviews, and scans of the field.
While my doctoral training at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology has provided me with aging expertise, research skills, and program development/evaluation experience, working as an intern at the Foundation exposed me to a different side of the aging field. I learned the important role that grantmakers play in supporting older adults and those who care for them, and in ensuring that policies and programs meet individuals’ unique needs.
As a program intern, I was proud to apply my skills and my personal passion to support older adults to further the Foundation’s mission: to improve the health and well-being of older Californians and their caregivers.
Collaboration in Action
If I had to pick one word that reflects my internship experience at the Foundation, it would be collaboration. Not only was collaboration with staff essential, given the remote format of the internship. But it was also a valued feature of so much of the work the Foundation does. I learned how Archstone Foundation facilitates collaborations among organizations, and how the Foundation collaborates with other foundations and organizations to serve older adults.
With the backdrop of a global pandemic and racial justice movements, the Foundation’s work has become even more urgent. Collaboration is necessary to address racial health disparities and social determinants of health, like food insecurity, housing insecurity, and loneliness.
Via virtual interviews and blog posts, I learned about and was able to share the Foundation's support of a new health care delivery model, called Virtual Communities of Care, which remotely connects low-income, older adults to primary care providers and community health workers. This collaboration enables vulnerable older adults to virtually share social health needs so that specific support, like connections to housing, food, or social support, can be immediately provided.
I also learned about the Foundation’s Care Partners project, in which a patient-centered, collaborative care approach to depression treatment for older adults was shown to improve symptoms at twice the rate of usual depression care. By including community-based organizations and family members in the care team, shared care plans meet older patients where they are comfortable and serve their unique needs.
With the recent launch of a year-long Learning Collaborative, I learned how the Foundation will support 10 clinics and community-based organizations in California to learn from experienced Care Partners collaborators at the University of Washington (UW) and University of California, Davis (UCD). This collaborative approach to implementing a team-based project not only allows Care Partners to share lessons they learned, but also supports new collaborations that can reach more older adults.
With the release of California’s Master Plan for Aging, I also learned the important role Archstone Foundation played in supporting the development and implementation of the Master Plan in collaboration with other funders. Stakeholders in government, community-based organizations, health care, philanthropy, academia, business, and the community were brought together to create the Master Plan for Aging, which provides a comprehensive blueprint for collaborating and coordinating efforts to make California communities age-friendly for all.
Bringing It All Together
It is not surprising that collaboration was a key feature of my internship experience. In the aging field, these collaborations reflect the dedication of organizations seeking to provide the best possible support to older adults. Throughout my internship, those I worked with both internally and at other organizations were eager to form connections and collaborate to support older adults and one another.
These collaborations would not be possible without the devotion and hard work that Foundation staff put into developing, supporting, and maintaining projects and partnerships. I want to thank Archstone Foundation staff and everyone I had the pleasure to work with for the invaluable internship experience.
I look forward to future collaborations!
