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RTI — Title III-B Supportive Services Evaluation (2007)

Rabiner DJ, Wiener JM, Khatutsky G, Brown DW, Osber DS. "Final Report for the Evaluation of Select Consumer, Program, and System Characteristics under the Supportive Services Program (Title III-B) of the Older Americans Act." RTI International for the Administration on Aging, June 2007.

Key findings used in wiki

What Title III-B is

  • Title III-B of the Older Americans Act funds the Supportive Services Program — a federal entitlement-adjacent program that provides non-medical services for older adults who wish to remain in their homes and communities.
  • Core III-B services include home-delivered meals, transportation, personal care, chore services, information and referral, case management, and access services.
  • III-B is the oldest and largest of the Older Americans Act service programs, and it is structurally separate from Title III-E (the National Family Caregiver Support Program, NFCSP) — III-B supports the older adult directly, while III-E supports the family caregiver.

What the evaluation found

  • RTI surveyed State Units on Aging (SUAs), Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs), and private home-health providers to understand how III-B is administered at state and local levels.
  • Findings documented substantial variation in service mix, targeting, and consumer characteristics across states and AAAs — the same program looks different depending on where a family lives.
  • The evaluation is the formal RTI-conducted predecessor to the 2016 NFCSP process evaluation, and together they form the empirical picture of how the OAA service system actually operates on the ground.

Why it matters for the wiki

  • Anchors the federal-program backdrop behind domain/benefits-landscape.md and evidence/federal-caregiver-policy.md — Title III-B and Title III-E are the two core OAA programs behind the Aging Network that most caregivers encounter.
  • Supports the broader wiki claim that state-by-state variation in caregiver support is structural, not incidental, and that caregiver-facing products must treat geography as a first-class feature rather than an edge case.