Gerontology Institute

Your article of July 9, and the subsequent letters (July 22), on my attempt to obtain funding for the Institute for Applied Gerontology at Cal State Los Angeles, which bears my name, reveals a fundamental misunderstand about the institute’s purpose, and the funding that I was seeking.

The institute is an established program that provides education and training in areas related to gerontology--education and training that hopefully will help eliminate the shortage of individuals skilled in the care and treatment of medical and other problems confronting the growing numbers of older Americans and their families. As your article states, it is a “community-based” gerontology center in East Los Angeles. However, it is also much more than this. Specifically, it links community service agencies, organizations and families with the university, to find ways of providing services to seniors in need.

The institute is among the first in the nation to place an emphasis on the delivery of health and social services to the elderly in community-based settings. Included in the programs are a credit certificate program in applied gerontology, as well as applied research projects on Alzheimer’s disease and other factors involving the aging process. The institute also places a special emphasis on examining the problems of, and providing services to, those seniors who are often ignored by society, the poor and minority elderly populations.

The $10 million that I was seeking for the institute was to be placed in “trust,” with the interest to be used to start new programs, to provide assistance to families with family members who are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. The ultimate goal of these programs would be to provide sufficient training and support to allow these families to keep their elderly disabled loved ones out of institutions, and at home, where they would receive the truly caring attention that they deserve. Assistance would have also been provided to other universities interested in developing similar programs, with the eventual development of a national “care program.” Such a model program, on a nationwide scale, would help reduce both medical costs and abuse of the elderly in institutions, by permitting the elderly disabled to stay at home.

One final important point needs to be made about the grant. It would have also been used to provide full scholarships to men and women who lost their jobs in defense industry cutbacks, and who wished to receive training in health- and human services-related employment areas.

After I leave Congress, I intend to devote my time to the university for the further development of this critically needed program. I am also donating campaign funds that I am permitted to convert to personal use but that I have decided should go to provide scholarships to young men and women to assist America’s elderly disabled and their families in need.

REP. EDWARD R. ROYBAL

D-Los Angeles