Health Highlights: July 20, 2015

• Tweet
• Pin It

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

U.S. Seniors’ Care Pioneer Dies

The woman who decades ago took charge of the U.S. government’s efforts to improve seniors’ long-term care facilities has died.

Helen Holt died July 12 at her home in Boca Raton, Fla. at age 101. The cause was heart failure, according to her son Rush Holt. Jr., a former congressman from New Jersey, The New York Times reported.

Holt was appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to lead a program created by the Housing Act of 1959 for the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages on nursing homes required to adhere to updated regulations.

“All there had been up until this time were ‘old people’s homes,’ ” Holt said in a 2014 biography. “Some were called ‘poor farms’ and some were ‘pop and mom’ care places. They needed something better and with higher standards.”

Holt encouraged architects, developers and operators to get to know at least one person in each home, The Times reported.

“Knowing this person’s needs would allow them to understand on a personal level what was required at the facility,” she explained in the biography.

Serving with the federal government until 1984, Holt created standards for the financing, construction and operation of about 1,000 new nursing homes with 100,000 beds, The Times reported.

More than 7,000 facilities have been built since the launch of the program, now run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

• Tweet
• Pin It