Executive Director
On Lok, Inc.
Download PDF
Jennie Chin Hansen, MS, RN, FAAN, is an active advisor, advocate, and consultant on issues important to older Americans, including dementia and health equity. Her primary career includes nearly 25 years in San Francisco at On Lok Senior Health Services and On Lok House (Section 8 202), providing integrated, globally financed, and comprehensive medical and community-based services—including home-to-care sites—for nursing home-eligible older persons. Jennie served as executive director of On Lok, Inc. from 1993-2005.
On Lok pioneered the concept of community-based medical and social services for frail seniors living at home. Its groundbreaking, fully capitated, integrated, and coordinated service delivery system became the prototype for the Program of All Inclusive Care to the Elderly (PACE), which was enshrined into federal law in 1997 and unlocked Medicare and Medicaid funding for tens of thousands of older adults with complex needs. PACE now operates extensively in California, 33 other states, and the District of Columbia.
In 2005 Jennie was appointed to a six-year term as a federal commissioner on Medicare policy and costs by the federal GAO Comptroller General. She currently serves on several boards related to health and health care, including the nonprofit Medicare Advantage SCAN Health Plan and HelpAge USA. She served as president of the 40-million member AARP from 2008-2010, presiding over the organization during the negotiations and development of the Affordable Care Act (2010). In 2019, she was appointed as one of the stakeholders who crafted the first-ever California Masterplan for Aging, now in implementation.
For more than a decade, Jennie has been a consultant on establishing accredited Geriatric Emergency Departments (GEDs) in San Francisco, with a specific focus on developing both geriatrics and dementia competency. She currently advises/consults in the content areas of brain health/dementia, workforce/transportation, chronic complex care, and health equity and serves in advisory roles with several startup companies. Jennie is the immediate past CEO of the American Geriatrics Society, the largest professional membership organization of gero-clinicians committed to the care of older adults living with care complexity.
In addition to being a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing (FAAN) and Health Care Leader of the Year (2022), Jennie has received an honorary Doctor of Nursing Science from Boston College (2008); the University of California, San Francisco Medal (2022), the school’s highest award; and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Harvard University (2024), the first nurse to be so honored by Harvard.
Other recent awards include the American Society on Aging’s Hall of Fame Award, the National Council on Aging’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Academy of Nursing’s Health Care Leader Award, one of the 50 National Influencers in Aging by PBS’ Next Avenue, and a 2019 Campaign Alumni Award by the University of California, San Francisco, in the “Audacious” category—which honors “those who have achieved a singular, remarkable accomplishment by setting a vision so impactful that others might have doubted it could be done.”
Jennie was raised in Boston, the child of immigrants from China. She graduated from the Boston College Connell School of Nursing in 1970 and then earned an M.S. in nursing from the University of California, San Francisco. Soon after graduating from UCSF, she worked in Idaho as a rural health nurse serving older adults, often driving hours to visit patients in their homes and provide care. That experience, recognizing how isolated and vulnerable older people could be, transformed her career and inspired her to help a constituency that still is so often underserved and underrepresented.Jennie and her husband, Philip Abrams, have been together for over 42 years, with 33 of those years spent married. They have two grandchildren. Their son and daughter-in-law live in San Francisco, where he works as an orthopedic surgeon and is the chief of arthroplasty at the University of California, San Francisco. Jennie and Philip travel often. They’ve traveled throughout the United States and have visited 45 countries so far—with plans to visit three more countries within the next six months. Additionally, Jennie has been an orchid collector for many years.