The COVID-19 pandemic posed a multi-faceted challenge to older adults and care institutions globally. Despite the policies aimed at protecting older adults from COVID-19, they bear the burden of risk. Some early efforts to protect them, often via extreme isolation measures yielded unanticipated health and psychosocial impacts.
The rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic presented a multi-faceted challenge to older adults, carers, and care institutions globally. Despite a wide range of policies aimed at protecting older adults from serious illness and death from COVID-19 that achieved some success in mitigating these outcomes, older adults continue to bear the burden of risk for these most severe outcomes. Additionally, some early efforts to protect older adults, often via extreme isolation measures both within care facilities and in the community, yielded unanticipated health and psychosocial impacts on older adults and care and service networks and revealed systemic ageism in health and social policies worldwide
This book compiles research conducted both during and after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic on the impacts of immediate response efforts, while delving into the longer-term differential effects across population subgroups and organizations. Four main areas examined in the volumes 25 chapters: Flexibility and innovation in early responses; ageism and isolation; long-term care and the direct care workforce; and disparities in access and experiences.
Governments, agencies, and aging services organizations will benefit from fully considering lessons learned and incorporating them into future emergency response efforts, considering similarities and differences in manifestations and consequences across different subpopulations and organization and policy contexts.
Introduction: Continuing Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic for Older
Adults I. Flexibility and Innovation in Early Reponses
1. A
COVID-19-Dedicated Facility for the Care of Older Adults During a Health
Emergency: An Italian Experience
2. Practicalities and Yield from Mass
Swabbing for COVID-19 in Residential Care Facilities in the South of Ireland
3. Implementing a Telehealth Support Tool for Community-Dwelling Older Adults
During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Investigation of Provider
Experiences
4. Meeting Older Adults Food Needs During the COVID-19 Pandemic:
Lessons and Challenges from Washington State
5. Social Service Providers
Perceptions of Older Adults Food Access During COVID-19 II. Ageism and
Isolation
6. Toward Age-Friendly Policies: Using the Framework of
Age-Friendliness to Evaluate the COVID-19 Measures from the Perspectives of
Older People in the Netherlands
7. The Short and Long-Term Correlates of
Change in Loneliness Status: The Role of Epidemic Control Measures During the
COVID-19 Pandemic
8. Older adults experiences of restrictive measures during
the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Southern Switzerland: Evidence
from the Corona Immunitas Ticino study
9. The Impact of Public Health
Restrictions in Residential Aged Care on Residents, Families, and Staff
During COVID-19: Getting the Balance Right
10. Inconsistent and Arbitrary
Age-Based Policies During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic
11. The
Impact of Age-Based COVID-19 Pandemic Regulations on Older People in Turkey:
A Capability Approach
12. Older peoples Contributions During the COVID-19
Pandemic Response III. Long-Term Care and the Direct Care Workforce
13. Who
Helped Long-Term Care Facilities and Who Did Not During COVID-19? A Survey of
Administrators in Israel
14. Understanding Organizational Resilience of Care
Homes for Older People During COVID-19 in China: A Qualitative Study with
Post-Pandemic Policy Implications
15. Going Above and Beyond: Residential
Aged Care Staff Experiences of Providing Care During the Changing Context of
COVID-19
16. You Killed the Hospital, They Have No Place Left: The
Experience of Nursing Home Multidisciplinary Staff in Israel during the
COVID-19 Pandemic
17. The Impact of Assisted Living Organizational Structure
and Process Characteristics on Staff Absence During COVID-19
18. COVID-19
Exacerbated Long-standing Challenges for the Home Care Workforce
19. Nursing
Home Oversight Trends During COVID-19 and the Current Survey Backlog in the
United States IV. Disparities in Access and Experiences
20. Sociodemographic
Factors and Adjustment of Daily Activities During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Findings from the SHARE Corona Survey
21. Financial Consequences of COVID-19
in Germany: Living Standards of Older People During the First Year of the
Pandemic
22. Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Effects of COVID-19 on
Employment Disruption and Financial Precarity
23. Impact of the First-Wave
COVID-19 Pandemic on Medical Expenditure for Older Adults in China: Lessons
from a Natural Experiment
24. Engagement and Advocacy of Community-Based
Organizations Serving Older Adults in Native American, Rural, and Homeless
Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic
25. Predictors of older adults
Attitudes Toward Various COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
Edward Alan Miller is Professor and Chair of the Department of Gerontology, and a Fellow in the Gerontology Institute, Donna M. and Robert J. Manning College of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Boston, and Adjunct Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the School of Public Health, Brown University. His research focuses on understanding the determinants and effects of public policies and practices affecting older adults in need of long-term services and supports. He is author/co-author/editor/co-editor of more than 153 journal articles, 21 book chapters, and 8 books. Dr. Miller is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and 2024 awardee of the Maxwell A. Pollack Award for Contributions of Healthy Aging, which recognizes an individual who has distinguished themselves by bridging the worlds of research, policy, and practice. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Aging & Social Policy.
