Abstract
All U.S. communities are facing the demographic imperative of serving increasing social and medical needs of older adults. Despite this, there is poor integration of social and medical services, and most professionals working with older adults do not have formal training in key knowledge areas related to the care of older adults. In San Francisco, we formed a partnership of public, private and academic groups engaged in aging services, called the Optimize Aging Collaborative, with the goal of training all professionals in the skills needed to be competant in responding to the needs of all older adults. We included a specific focus on particularly vulnerable older adults- those who live alone, who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, or who have dementia. We will demonstrate how our collaborative has increased knowledge and commitment to improve the well being of older adults and which elements of this partnership contribute to its success.