If you've been following today's acronym saga, the Iowa House this morning gave final legislative approval to a bill that would change the name of the Iowa Department of Elder Affairs to the Departmenton Aging. Sixty-eight-year-old Representative Dave Heaton said he was "offended" that the new acronym for the agency might be D.O.A. "You can't have an acronym like this when you're referring to elderly people," Heaton said.
Representative Janet Petersen, a Democrat from Des Moines, suggested during today's debate that the department's managers may choose to use the agency's full name. "I'm not sure if they're going to be called D.O.A. I think Representative Heaton raised a good point and so I'll be talking to the department," Petersen said. "Maybe they'll be D.A. Maybe we just won't have an acronym for them. That'd be nice."
John McCalley, director of the currently-named Department of Elder Affairs, now weighs in, assuring Heaton and others the agency will not be known as the D.O.A. "Yes, the Department on Aging will use the acronym D.A.," McCalley writes in an email.
About O.Kay Henderson
Kay is a founding member of the Radio Iowa network newsroom. In 1994, she became the network’s news director. She’s a featured reporter and commentator on Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press,” and the 2002 recipient of the Shelley Award.
Hope the name change isn’t ‘dead on arrival’. That really sounds more like a band name.