voluntary effort, to establish a multipurpose activity center where older people may come to spend the day together, to combat loneliness, on the one hand, and to find meaningful kinds of activities, on the other. These activities range from participation in workshop activities for which they may earn a small amount of money, through service activities given to the community, and to the social, recreational types of things which are frequently done.

Mr. BAILEY. Would you suggest that they be built in close proximity to your rest homes?

Dr. DONAHUE. I would suggest that they be built in central locations that are easily accessible by transportation. These usually mean somewhere near the central parts of cities. However, if there are collections of homes and nursing homes in some specific parts of cities, which is true for a few, then I think at least one or more of these multipurpose centers could be well located in that vicinity also. I would like to add that in these multipurpose centers, not only are these activities available, but most of them also include counseling services, some diagnostic health services, and out of them frequently are operated services which may be taken to the homes of older people themselves, such as meals on wheels, and other kinds of home services.

If these can be concentrated, and where they have been they have been exceedingly useful, in some of these multipurpose centers, representatives of the regular agencies, such as the employment commissions, veterans' organizations, will provide a counselor in the center so that the older person need not go to any other point except on specific referral.

In other words, he gets his service here and goes only to another point if it has been determined that this is a desirable thing for him to do. It brings the specialists together at a single point where the older person can be fully served, and it is for this reason that I would recommend strongly that this bill be amended to include these kinds of centers. I think the funds should be of such magnitude that they would not only help the large communities, but would also provide similar centers in rural areas and small communities too.

Although I wish to be on record as supporting the bill's provision for research, training, and demonstration grants, I would like to qualify this support. I do not believe that ample consideration has been given to the fact that the largest number of workers needed in aging are those professionally trained to serve older people directly or to plan and develop programs and facilities to serve them.

The emphasis in the several grant programs of the National Institutes of Health is upon research and upon the training of research investigators. There are practically no grant programs which will support the development of curriculums and training of persons who will serve in such practical jobs as those of managers of old age and nursing homes or of senior citizen housing projects; as directors or staff members of State commissions and community committees on aging; as specialists on aging in voluntary and governmental agencies, and in business and industry, and in unions; and as executives of senior citizen counseling centers or multipurpose centers that I have just mentioned.

These represent but a few of the jobs which require a comprehensive, interdisciplinary training about aging. A person with such training would be best described as a generalist in aging or a gerontologist.

In consequence of the need and of the lack of other provisions, I urge, Mr. Chairman, that the bill be amended to make clear provisions for funds to be used for developing curriculums for training stipends to universities and students in gerontology. These funds or this provision for a comprehensive training program should in no way replace the provisions already contained in the bill, but would be an important supplement to them.

Mr. BAILEY. I am sure the witness realizes that you are giving us a rather difficult task. I have been trying to build some classrooms throughout the Nation for the last 14 years and still haven't made too much progress.

Dr. DONAHUE. I recognize that it is a difficult task and I recognize that the educational institutions in the Nation have an equal responsibility to take a more vigorous approach on this problem also, including my own institution.

Mr. BAILEY. Might I inquire as to just how much more formal testimony you have?

Dr. DONAHUE. I would like to read the next section of two or three pages, if I may.

Mr. BAILEY. We have another witness to be heard.

Dr. DONAHUE. I will hurry.

Mr. BAILEY. And the House is in session.

Dr. DONAHUE. I would like to do this, Mr. Chairman, because I come to one provision of the bill with which I must disagree. This is the one authorizing the creation of a permanent U.S. Commission on Aging appointed by and responsible to the President. My reasons for disagreement with this feature of the bill are several.

First, students of political science inform us that the role of special commissions is that of planning, advising, and regulating. It is not that of serving as an operating program agency. To create such an agency, and to give it responsibility for developing and coordinating governmental services for the older segment of the population would put it in the unfavorable position of a small agency competing with infinitely larger ones with their own well-established and highly successful programs in aging.

Mr. BAILEY. Will you permit another interruption? You understand that the Fogarty proposal does not contemplate taking the activities now being conducted through the Department and putting them in the Commission.

Dr. DONAHUE. This is my next sentence, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. BAILEY. This is just a coordinating group, is it?

Dr. DONAHUE. With an operating program of grant programs, as I understand it. My next sentence was to the effect that the bill does not hint that there is any intention to move the various programs affecting older citizens from their present departments into the province of the U.S. Commission on Aging. And I think to do so would be, of course, fantastic and would create complete confusion. However, this means that the Commission would have, at best, a grant program and whatever other operations the existing agencies do not now

include. It would, also, have the hope of affecting coordination between and with existing programs and agencies.

Mr. BAILEY. That would be the major purpose of setting up this Commission, would it not, to be a coordinating commission?

Dr. DONAHUE. My statement is how nearly it could satisfy such a hope is, I believe, a point in question.

Second, if such a Commission were to be established it would almost inevitably have to limit its programs and services to persons of specified chronological ages. Yet it is a well-known scientific fact that the changing needs of people are only minimally related to chronological age. Recognition of this fact demands that programs for all people be conceived and executed along developmental lines.

Employment problems related to age appear relatively early in the life of the worker, not just after he has reached his sixth or seventh decade. Chronic disease has its beginnings in younger persons; its control and care demand attention early in life. "Health maintenance is also a long-term task.

Housing for senior citizens is intimately related to the planning and living arrangements of younger families. These and many other needs require life-long planning by governmental agencies, and they cannot be well met by a special organization limited to the senior citizen group. For this reason it seems much more pertinent to place a special unit on aging within the framework of an agency concerned with functional programs for persons of all ages. I shall develop this point in connection with my next comment.

My third reason for being unwilling to support a U.S. Commission on Aging is because it would disrupt the established system wherein most of the agencies with major programs affecting older persons are efficiently concentrated in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Not only does this make easier coordination among the several agencies of the Department, but it makes possible comprehensive long-range planning for the welfare of persons regardless of age. Moreover, the Department already has a special staff on aging whose responsibilities could easily be enlarged to include administration of a grant program. It is certainly true that the special staff on aging languished for nearly 8 years, but under the present administration it is moving rapidly ahead. In the capacity of an occasional consultant to the special staff and as head of a university unit which makes frequent demands upon this staff for assistance of various kinds, I wish to point out that these relationships have become increasingly productive during the past year.

The special staff on aging, under the dynamic leadership of Dr. Donald P. Kent, has, within the space of just a few months, begun to move into its proper place of national leadership. Plagued by far too few effective staff members, and while vigorously searching for additional professionally trained workers, it has done more than would reasonably have been expected. Its public information efforts have included publication of the formal report of the White House Conference on Aging, 14 items in its series on guidelines from the White House Conference on Aging, as well as 14 case studies in its series on patterns of progress in aging.

In addition, it has improved its new bulletin Aging until it is again the most important single publication in the United States for persons having responsibility in planning for and serving older people.

It has established a referral library whose services are available throughout the country. It has begun in-service training for its regional specialists on aging, who, in their own right and with leadership and guidance from the director, are assisting all of us in the States to achieve more and better programs.

It has during the year convened a special ad hoc committee of representatives of several universities and colleges to develop training priorities in the field of gerontology. It has made itself available to and has served several educational institutions as consultants on the development of courses, institutes of gerontology, and special curriculums.

The special staff has also sponsored or convened several conferences of executives of State agencies on aging. In this conference, as well as in many other instances, the special staff demonstrated its ability to bring together the representatives of the several agencies in the Department and within the Federal Government whose programs serve older people.

Further evidence of growing cooperation is apparent in a recent interdepartmental committee established between the Housing and Home Finance Agency and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to consider the development of special services to persons living in senior citizen housing. Other ways in which the special staff has made itself felt throughout the country has been by generously giving its staff time to speak to and consult with a wide variety of groups at National, State, and local levels; and second by establishing the Public Advisory Committee on Aging to assist and advise in the further development of long-range, comprehensive plans.

In fact, at a recent meeting of the Public Advisory Committee, the consensus was that a special Federal commission on aging would be highly undesirable and inefficient. It was believed that it would be duplicatory and that it would find it impossible to achieve the coordination and cooperation envisaged in the field.

In view of all these considerations, Mr. Chairman, I favor maintaining the present governmental organization for aging, providing that the grant provisions for planning, for programs, and for training are passed and are assigned to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and providing that a study commission be appointed which will have the function of evaluating effort in implementing the legislation proposed, and relating such effort to the vital purposes of the Department as a whole. The current performance of the special staff on aging is convincing evidence that it or some similar unit, such as an office of aging located within the Department, can give the leadership needed, especially if the Congress provides for a Study Commission on Aging to assist the Department improve and increase its work and to evaluate its effectiveness.

Such an arrangement would be a more logical and effective organizational plan than would an independent commission on aging.

Finally, I would like to speak briefly to my third topic, that is H.R. 8732 introduced by you, Chairman Bailey, and known as the General University Extension Act. This bill has far-reaching significance and deserves full support.

In a recent symposium sponsored by the National Education Association on the educational implications of automation, there was much concern expressed over the fact that while the new technology has the

potential to improve human welfare, it has an equal potential for adding to human hardships through the rapid obsolescence of skills and consequent unemployment, and through increased rates of productivity which will force workers into earlier retirement where they will be faced with the problem of using large amounts of free or uncommited time.

The General University Extension Act contains provisions which will help greatly in alleviating these difficulties. It provides for assistance to develop general university education programs and statewide plans for adult education. While this general provision would include persons of any age above that of usual compulsory school attendance, it might well make a more clear-cut provision for senior citizens.

It is generally agreed on the basis of the results of research studies that persons who are prepared for retirement make a better adjustment and lead healthier and happier lives in their post working years than those who make no such preparation. Further, there is scientific evidence which indicates that better educated persons show less intellectual change with age and are healthier than persons with less education.

Taking these facts into consideration, the Subcommittee on Education and Training of the Public Advisory Committee recommended that the Bailey bill be amended to include specifically the preparations of middle-aged and older adults for retirement living. My own long experience in such educational programs coupled with the recommendations of the subcommittee lead me to urge that such an amendment be made to the bill.

In summary, may I say again that the shortage of trained personnel is so critical that there is grave need for passage of an immediate emergency measure to provide funds to an appropriate and interested governmental agency for use in increasing instructional staff to prepare workers who give direct services to older people.

Secondly, the Fogarty-McNamara bill contains far-reaching provisions of great consequence to the welfare of older persons and I urge its enactment with certain amendments.

These amendments should achieve the following (1) make clear provision for funds to be used in developing curriculums and training stipends to universities and students in gerontology; (2) inclusion of funds for building multipurpose and service centers for senior citizens; and most importantly (3) replacement of the provision for an independent Commission on Aging by one which places similar programs and responsibilities in a unit on aging within the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare which has as part of its structure a study commission to assist in increasing and improving its programs and to evaluate the success of its efforts.

Finally, I would urge upon the Congress the support of the Bailey bill for general extensive education with a specific provision to include the preparation of middleaged and senior citizens to lead healthy and happy post working lives.

Mr. BAILEY. I will take considerable measure in advising the Department that you made an excellent witness in their behalf.

Dr. DONAHUE. Thank you.

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you very much for your appearance.
Dr. DONAHUE. Thank you.