The Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) recently released the Congressional Report on the Feasibility of Establishing a Uniform National Database on Elder Abuse. The report was the result of the 2006 passage by Congress of a portion of the Elder Justice Act. That provision directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a study in consultation with the Attorney General assessing current elder abuse data collection systems and examining the feasibility of establishing a uniform national elder abuse database to improve the quality and accessibility of data.

Key recommendations from the report include:

• Addressing systematic weaknesses in existing elder abuse data collection systems
• Compiling a national database of state APS data
• Plan to build a comprehensive cross-disciplinary national database of administrative data on elder abuse by combining sources incrementally
• Despite the many challenges and considerations, an investment in a national data collection effort could build upon the existing systems