About NACAC

About Us

The National Association of Community Aging Circles’ (NACAC) objective is to engage and foster community leadership in transforming aging in the United States by providing communities and families with the framework, tools, and technology to manage and coordinate what is needed to keep older people at home and connected to the community. As individual communities adopt the NACAC model, NACAC will provide communities and their families with a platform to share best practices and demonstrate that a community-based program is a safer, more appropriate, and cost-effective response to the needs of older people and their families.

What Carers Have to Say About the Jointly App

“I think it's a great idea as we use self directed support and this app is a great way of sharing information with the people I choose. What if something happens to me then everything being in my head is no good to anyone. This app will enable me to keep everyone in the loop. Thank you!"

Agnes

Carer

"Jointly has given me the confidence to be able to give good support at any time, including at a time of crisis and has helped me to stay on top of things and allowed me to access information, including medication anytime, anywhere."

Kate

Carer

"Our family's intensively used Jointly app to care for my uncle. Sadly my uncle died in March but the app enabled us to support him to die at home, in line with his wishes.”

Denise

Carer

"Jointly has been fantastic for supporting my daughter who has Down’s Syndrome and lives independently. Thank you so much for it– I have been recommending it widely!

Liz

Carer

Our Mission

Taking Control of the Aging Experience

NACAC’s mission is to engage and support the leadership of community organizations, to enable their older community members and others who need support to remain safely at home and connected in their communities. We work with community organizations to provide orientation, training, and support for communities and their families to identify, organize, and manage all the resources needed to take control of their aging experience.

Our Vision

A New Era of Aging

With the collapse of long-term care options in the U.S., frail older people increasingly remain in the community, and families are overwhelmed by their care needs. Technology can make it easier to access and better coordinate care. The human and financial resources they need to sustain them exist in the community. The leadership for this new era of care will arise from within the community and will help families find and coordinate the resources they need to enable frail older people to remain at home safely, with quality of care and life.

Our Team

Our team loves what they do, and are on the forefront of reimagining aging in the U.S.

David Dunkelman, JD, MS, Chairman & CEO

Founded and served for over thirty years as the CEO of the non-profit Weinberg Campus, a large, innovative, award-winning, multifaceted array of programs and settings for frail aging. He has consulted nationally with over 25 communities, helping them to develop strategic approaches to facility and programmatic design for older people.

The Weingberg Campus was the first healthcare organization to receive the National Peter F. Drucker Award for Innovation in Nonprofit Management. Among his many individual awards is the Dr. Evan Calkins Meritorious Service Award, for “lifetime contributions to the field of aging,” presented by the Western New York Network in Aging, Inc.

His book Aging Forward: A New Path for Health, Technology, and Community, published by Health Professions Press in 2023, has received the 2024 Silver Nautilus Award in the Aging Consciously category, a 2024 Grand Award from the APEX® Awards for Publication Excellence, and a 2024 National Mature Media Award. It was also named a finalist for the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year.

Richard Hurtig, Ph.D., Vice President & Chief Technology Officer

Professor Emeritus and former Chair of the nationally ranked Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders at the University of Iowa. He has served as President of the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences & Disorders. He is Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA).

His research has included the development of assistive technologies for individuals with complex communication needs as a result of developmental disabilities, trauma, or a degenerative condition such as ALS. His patented noddle® smart switch enables individuals who may only be able to produce a small intentional gesture to summon their caregivers and to also control a speech generating device in order to communicate.

His work in assistive technology has been supported in part by the N.I.H. National Institute of Nursing Research. He has written extensively about strategies to facilitate patient-provider communication for persons with both short-term and long-term disabilities. To support the communication needs of individuals with limited English proficiency, he developed bilingual communication tools for use in acute care settings. To meet the needs of intubated patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, he led a team at the Patient-Provider Communication Network to develop and disseminate free communication tools for use in the ICUs. Those tools were downloaded from over 190 countries at the height of the pandemic.

He is currently working with NACAC to provide tools to support families caring for an elderly or ill family member.