ADA's message on the OAA

Older Americans Act Reauthorization

President Bush has signed the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act (OAA) making new, stronger nutrition services now law. ADA saw the renewal of OAA in 2006 presenting a critical opportunity for improving older Americans’ health through nutrition strategies, and worked with congressional leaders and administration officials to ensure that balanced, forward looking approaches to healthy aging would be included.  

With the aging of American society, ADA made finding strategies for successful aging a strategic area and priority public policy issue. ADA felt it was essential to begin to prioritize offerings to older adults with cost effective solutions, including nutrition, and to commit to a review of OAA nutrition programs in order to improve them.

OAA is the chief federal law governing the organization and delivery of a number of social services for older Americans. The largest single component is the Older Americans Act Nutrition Program (OAANP), which consists of both congregate and home-delivered meals (“Meals on Wheels”). 

Among the new nutrition provisions are:

  • Increased recognition of the important role of dietitians and other qualified nutrition professionals in meal planning, nutrition education, and nutrition screening, counseling and assessment
  • Greater emphasis on the critical link between nutrition and the prevention of chronic disease
  • Inclusion of nutrition in programs to assist family caregivers
  • Authorization of the first independent evaluation of the OAA nutrition programs by the Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) at the Institute of Medicine, National Academies of Science. Specifically, the IOM study would include:
    • An evaluation of the effect of nutrition programs on the health and nutritional status of program participants, prevention of participant hunger and food insecurity and the ability of participants to live independently.
    • A cost-benefit analysis of the nutrition programs, including the potential to reduce Medicare and Medicaid costs.
    • Recommendations for how nutrition programs may be modified to improve health outcomes, including recommendations on how to improve meal quality, client nutritional status and the role, if any, of multi-vitamin mineral supplementation.