Generations Journal

In-depth Views on Aging

Generations Journal, vol. 49, no. 1 (Spring 2025)The Promise of an Age-Friendly Ecosystem

Guest Editor:

Karon L. Phillips, PhD

Megan Wolfe, JD

Articles in this Issue:

Leading by Example: Minnesota’s Approach to Dementia and Aging

This post is timed to June being Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month. Minnesota's rapidly aging population has made Alzheimer's disease and related dementias a pressing priority for the state. More than 120,000 Minnesotans are living with Alzheimer's, a 20%...

Joint Replacement and Nutrition: What Older Adults Need to Know

June is Wound Healing Awareness Month, a timely reminder of the critical role healing plays in recovery from surgery—especially for older adults undergoing joint replacement. Each year in the United States, more than 790,000 total knee replacements and 450,000 hip...

Aggressive Immigration Policies Hurt Older Adults

Older immigrants are vital to our communities. They are strong pillars of support in multigenerational families and regarded as leaders with wisdom and expertise, but despite their contributions, older immigrants and immigrant communities are under attack. From the...

The Impact of Aging with a Criminal Record

People Living with HIV (PLWH) are, on average, living longer due to the revolutions in available treatment, while grappling with a system that is inadequate to address the needs of the general aging population, let alone the specific needs of People Living and Aging...

On Aging, Identity and Survival

The landscape of HIV/AIDS has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. Thanks to advances in antiretroviral therapy (ART), people living with HIV are now living longer, transforming what was once a terminal diagnosis into a manageable chronic condition....

Caring for the Caregivers

In the ongoing fight against HIV, much attention has been given to treatment, prevention and support for those living with the virus. But standing quietly beside many of them are caregivers—spouses, siblings, friends, parents, adult children and even professional...

Leaving a Legacy: HIV Long-Term Survivors Share Their Stories

Before medicine brought hope, people living with HIV were surviving. They buried friends, fought for care, endured silence, and found ways to live through a crisis that was supposed to end their lives. Today, more than 40 years after the start of the HIV epidemic,...

Navigating Comprehensive Care for Older Adults Living with HIV

The number of older adults living with HIV/AIDS is rising rapidly, particularly in marginalized communities (HIV.gov, 2024). Although biomedical advances have extended life expectancy for people living with HIV, they have not eliminated the social, emotional and...

Healing Hope: The Power of Storytelling for Women Aging with HIV

The experience of aging while living with HIV remains profoundly isolating for many women. Despite advancements in medical treatments, societal stigma and historical neglect continue to marginalize women diagnosed with HIV, particularly as they age. This isolation is...

YEP Educates: Empowering Lives Through Education

Several years ago, a group of grandchildren were gathered on Nina Nichols' sofa, and one asked her about the pieces of paper adorning her walls. She explained they were diplomas, signifying that her son and two daughters had successfully completed high school. She...

Without Immigrants, Our Caregiving System Could Collapse

More Americans than ever before will live to 100 in coming years, with the number of those ages 100 or older projected to more than quadruple by 2054. Within a decade, older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history. As our population ages,...

It’s About Ability, Not Age

With 58 million people ages 65 and older in the United States today—and 1.4 billion worldwide by 2030—the idea that they all belong in the same class, need the same equipment, or enjoy the same pace when exercising is simply absurd. Yet we persist with labels like...

Let’s Flip the Script on Aging

Suppose the opposite of what's true today were true. Suppose older adults weren't seen as winding down or stuck in their ways, but instead as power AI users, invaluable mentors and successful startup founders. Suppose generational differences weren't a source of...

Homesharing Can Be a Path to Community

Having spent many years working at the Burlington Community Justice Center in various roles, on restorative justice panels, as a case coordinator and as a victim liaison, I have always aspired to and identify myself as being a peacemaker. And helping create the...

Exposing Glaring Gaps in Hospice Care

The below is excerpted from the new book, DisElderly Conduct: The Flawed Business of Assisted Living and Hospice (New Village Press, paperback, May 13, 2025). Despite common belief, hospices are not run by volunteers. Volunteers might become part-time visitors or...

Executive Orders and Federal Agency Gutting Harm Older Adults

In a typical month, most older adults in the United States will interact directly with and rely upon several federal programs and agencies to navigate the healthcare system, apply for economic benefits like Social Security, or get help with housing or utility bills....

The Community That Shapes You

Editor's Note: The John A. Hartford Foundation is collaborating with ASA to advance equity in aging by supporting ASA RISE, a 20-week social justice and leadership program for rising leaders of color in aging, and via the development and dissemination of...

Generations Journal, vol. 48, no. 4 (Winter 2024–25)Grandparents Raising Grandchildren in the United States

Guest Editor:

Wendy Lustbader, MSW

Gaynell M. Simpson, PhD

Articles in this Issue:

Advocating for Grandparents Who Step in to Parent

It has been an immense pleasure to work on this seminal issue of Generations about Grandparenthood, specifically as it relates to BIPOC grandparents raising grandchildren in skipped generation households. Guest Editor Wendy Lustbader, MSW, is a Clinical Professor in...

Getting By Is Not Enough

Abstract African American grandparents are an essential part of family stability. Yet too many skip-generation households must navigate care within the constraints of poverty and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). They are called upon and expected to do more with...

Keeping Families Together Via Better Guardianship Rules

Abstract In many BIPOC families, children spend significant periods under their grandparents' or other relatives' care. Minor guardianship can be an important legal mechanism, giving caregivers the legal status needed to serve as a substitute parent and provide...

Diversity Among Grandparent Caregivers: What We Need to Learn

Abstract: This article examines the implications of prioritizing diversity among grandparent caregivers as a lens through which they can be better understood, with special attention to Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC). Over the past few decades, the...

‘I Wanna Put That Education in Them’

Abstract This article examines how grandmothers raising their grandchildren in skipped-generation households support their grandchildren's cognitive development across the life course, predominantly by prioritizing their education in daily routines and by...

Getting Grandchildren Back on Their Feet

Abstract This article examines how grandmothers raising grandchildren in skipped-generation households tended to their grandchildren's physical development, including 1) treating illnesses and injuries; 2) alleviating malnourishment and teaching healthy eating habits;...

‘Your Grandma Is Here for You’

Abstract This article explores how grandmothers raising grandchildren in skipped-generation households fostered their healthy social and emotional development by helping them cope with emotional difficulties from parental absence and presence, grandfamily stigma, and...

A Culturally Adapted Kinship Navigator Program

Abstract The Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe (PGST) operates as a full-service government, including a child welfare system in the Children and Family Services (CFS) Department and a Kinship Navigator Program, the Kinship Parenting Program. That program works with kinship...

Supporting Kinship Caregivers

Abstract This article describes Washington State's efforts to understand and support the needs of kinship caregivers through cultural adaptations, focusing on tribal and Latine communities. The state's Kinship Navigator Program history is described, as well as its...

GRAND Voices—Powerful Advocates for Change

Abstract Engaging people with lived experience needs to be intentional and supported to be effective. For more than 10 years, Generations United's GRAND Voices Network has demonstrated the power and impact of meaningful engagement changing public policy and service...

Generations Journal, vol. 48, no. 3 (Fall 2024)The Anniversary Issue: Revisiting Generations in ASA’s 70th Year

Articles in this Issue:

ASA’s Golden Child, Generations

One of the highlights of my career has been the opportunity to serve for 2 decades on the Editorial Advisory Board of Generations, the quarterly journal of the American Society on Aging—both as its chair and as a guest editor for three issues. Each issue of...

How Splendid to Explore ‘Gender and Age: A Focus on Women’

It's not unusual to wince when looking back at how we saw the world earlier in life—areas of innocence that became decidedly more complex and nuanced over time, invisible biases that once skewed our perceptions, situations that loomed with great significance yet...

History Repeats Itself on the Page

This idea of rounding up former chairs of the Generations Editorial Advisory Board for a dedicated journal to mark ASA's 70th anniversary is delightful, and something to celebrate, indeed! For 7 1/2 years between 2006 and 2015 I served as chair of the Editorial...

Innovating Like It’s 1976

So much progress! Onward and upward we go in the field of aging, especially in policy and advocacy! Look at our sophisticated cross tabulations, be impressed by our rich data and sharp analyses, check out the way we use technology for advocacy campaigns! We've made so...

Medicare Has Sustainability Issues: Who Could Have Guessed?

The Medicare program has been a major boon to the United States' national well-being since its enactment in 1965, resulting in enormously improved access to high-quality, affordable health care for many millions of older and disabled Americans. But these benefits of...

Remembering the Value of Legacy

During the years in which I served on the Generations Editorial Advisory Board (1990-2012) and chaired it (1997-2001), single-themed issues of the journal were not so much assembled (as at a conventional journal) as curated. At in-person meetings of the board, members...

Why Care Is So Fundamental

Editing the publications of the American Society on Aging has always felt more like a privilege than a job. During the past 13 years working here, I have learned much more than I originally thought possible. I hadn't come into the job blind, mind you; likely the story...

Generations Journal, vol. 48, no. 2 (Summer 2024)Advancing Applied Research in Aging

Guest Editors:

Claire Ankuda

Bonnie Ewald

Articles in this Issue

How States Use Data to Inform Family Caregiving Policy

Abstract: Family caregivers are a key part of states' long-term care systems, and longitudinal data and evaluations on family caregivers can help states more effectively develop and implement policy to support these populations. Several states have developed...

How Research Can Influence Payment Policy

Abstract: Decades of research have demonstrated that Hospital at Home (HaH) safely delivers hospital-level care in a patient's home. More recently, research has informed the development of a value-based payment model to disseminate HaH. The COVID-19 pandemic enabled...

How Do Foundations and Funders Approach Evaluation and Impact?

Abstract: Evaluation and impact are two words many of us use daily. But what do they mean and how can they improve our work? As a funder, evaluation plans are an integral component of all proposals we review. This article explains why evaluations are so important to...

Spending Time in the Weeds, But for Worthy Outcomes

How does that old saying go, if you want something done then ask a busy person? That is exactly what happened when we asked Bonnie Ewald and Claire Ankuda to guest edit this complex issue, “Advancing Applied Research in Aging,” of Generations. Turns out that adage is...

Defining Evidence for Aging Services in a Dynamic World

Abstract: Since the early 2000s, the Aging Network has made great strides in building capacity for and delivering evidence-based programs that promote the health and well-being of older adults. With an eye toward a more dynamic approach to understanding, developing,...

Navigating Evaluation Challenges in Community-Based Care Management

Abstract: The finding that the Camden Coalition's signature care-management intervention, the Camden Core Model, did not reduce readmissions was a significant moment for the organization. While disappointing, we saw it as an opportunity to learn and further innovate...

Leveraging Health Services Research to Address Aging Health Equity

Abstract: To achieve optimal, equitable health outcomes for all older adults, the United States desperately needs equity in access to, quality of, and cost of aging care. To illustrate these needs, we discuss the current inequitable state of frailty care. Frailty...

A Balance of Art and Science: Promoting Collaborative Aging Research

Abstract: It takes a long time to integrate research evidence into healthcare practice and policy. Older adults with chronic conditions and social needs cannot wait. Interprofessional Collaborative (IPC) research teams encourage examining healthcare problems through...

PACE: A Case Study of Information-Driven Innovation and Care

PACE, the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly, is an innovative and rapidly growing model of services for older adults needing long term, chronic care. Today there are 159 PACE programs operating in 32 states and the District of Columbia. These programs...

Generations Journal, vol. 48, no. 1 (Spring 2024)Mental Health, Aging, and Resilience

Guest Editor:

Tobi Abramson

Articles in this Issue

Building the Geriatric Mental Health and Substance Use Workforce

Abstract: The United States must act now to strengthen the geriatric healthcare workforce to meet the mental health and substance use (MH/SU) needs of a growing older adult population. Older adults have complex MH/SU needs. The geriatric specialist shortage means we...

Digital Mental Health for Older Adults: Foe or Friend?

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the integration of telemental health services for older adults. But such digitization also created new complexities regarding equitable access, privacy, and regulation. This article summarizes the evolving digital mental...

Connecting Crime and Abuse Victims to Mental Health Services

Abstract: Older adult victims of abuse and crime have significant unmet mental health needs, with high rates of depression and anxiety. But few victims are offered mental health care, and there are no standardized, effective programs to address their specific mental...

Mental Health Task Sharing: Training Volunteers, Peers, and Interns

Abstract: In task-sharing models, specific mental health tasks typically delivered by a licensed mental health clinician are assigned instead to a non-licensed individual. These approaches may address unmet mental health needs in rural and other low-resource areas. A...

Our Guest Editor: Passionate About Elders’ Resilience

Tobi Abramson may serve in two rather large day jobs—directing both geriatric mental health initiatives for New York City and the Mental Health Counseling Program at the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)—but we at ASA know Tobi as a deeply involved leader who is...

The Ibasho Model of Elder Empowerment and Community Ownership

Abstract: Aging is conventionally viewed as a process of decline, which marginalizes a fast-growing part of the world's population and is detrimental to elders' mental health. In contrast, the Ibasho model, led by eight core principles, empowers elders to co-create a...

See Me! Hear Me! Know Who I Am!

This piece originally ran in the Spring 1997 edition of Generations. The Editorial Advisory Board found it remains relevant to this day (if not more so) and pertinent to this issue on Mental Health, Aging, and Resilience. Bonnie was a beloved member of the American...

Post-Traumatic Growth and Aging

Abstract: Most older adults have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime. This article explores the relationship between aging and post-traumatic growth (PTG). Increasingly, PTG is recognized as a phenomenon describing positive changes following an...

Alleviating Loneliness in Older Adults Through Creative Expression

Abstract: Loneliness has become a pressing concern for elders, impairing physical and mental health and eroding quality of life. Creative arts engagement is an attractive programmatic intervention, enabled by selective modulation of brain activity, and reinforced by...

The Impact of Ageism on Elders’ Mental Health

Abstract: Ageism is a pervasive issue with profound implications for mental health. Negative stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes can lead to feelings of isolation, anxiety, and depression in older adults. Ageism can affect self-worth and self-esteem, making...

A Note of Introduction

Dear Readers, It has been my privilege to guest edit this issue of Generations Journal on Mental Health, Aging, and Resilience. When asked why this topic matters, one need only think about the growth of the aging population and the anticipated increase in the number...

Generations Journal, vol. 47, no. 4 (Winter 2023-24)Promoting Long, Healthy, and Productive Lives for Everyone

Guest Editor:

Ernest Gonzales

Articles in this Issue

Consulting Program by and for Older Detroiters

Abstract: This article profiles a program in Detroit, MI, funded by the National Institute on Aging, called the Michigan Center for African American Aging Research and its key offshoot the Healthier Black Elders Center (HBEC). Board members of its Community Advisory...

Intersectional Perspectives to Health and Work in Later Life

Abstract: There are more older workers who are women and people of color in the American workforce than ever before. Advances in technology and medicine have allowed older workers to remain in the workforce longer, even as older workers continue to be challenged with...

Ageism in the Productive Aging Framework

Abstract: Substantial growth has occurred in the development of scholarship and advocacy to promote productive engagement in later life. Yet this progress matches neither the growth nor potential of the older population. We must focus on ways to optimize older adult...

Multigenerational Advocacy Among Sexual and Gender Minorities

Abstract: In our increasingly polarizing society, we have been inundated with news stories that perpetuate stereotypes of different generations and lament a great generational divide. But researchers and practitioners paint a very different—more optimistic—picture of...

Intergenerational Theory as a Tool to Diversify Practice and Policy

Abstract: Intergenerational programs engage youth (ages 24 and younger) and adults (ages 50 and older) in intentional, shared programming. Research consistently reveals positive outcomes reflecting varied program goals and participants. Not everyone has equal access...

Our Guest Editor: Determined to Foster Equitable Aging

Ernest Gonzales is an idealist who is actively working to evolve how we age until it is equitable. He gets a mind-boggling amount done, and we got a peek into his methods working on this issue as he was incredibly organized and somehow always cheerfully responsive to...

Intergenerational Programs as a Tool to Advance Equity

Abstract: Amid a climate of division and inequity in American society, we are also lonelier than ever. But connection, particularly across age, gender, ethnic, and socioeconomic divides, lays the foundation to address social inequities and create a better future for...

Older Entrepreneurs: Unsupported Economic Heroes

Abstract: Entrepreneurs are hailed as economic heroes and drivers of job growth. Yet an analysis of Current Population Survey data of U.S. residents between ages 50-64 demonstrates that entrepreneurs disproportionately lack health insurance and workplace retirement...

Generations Journal, vol. 47 (Fall 2023 Supplement)Special Edition 2023: Structural Ageism

Guest Editor:

Michael Adams

Rani Kronick

Articles in this Issue

Reversing the Systemic Tide to Truly Lift All Boats

Abstract: Ageism and ableism negatively impact the aging experience, especially for elders from historically marginalized groups (Black, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Hispanic and Latinx, Native American Indian, and LGBTQ+ elders and people with disabilities)....

On Disability, Race, and Sexuality

This past fall, Rani Kronick, a scholar and disability rights activist, interviewed Patricia Fraser-Morales, a social services professional, about living with ableism and ageism. Morales was born with spina bifida, identifies as a lesbian and as a woman of color. She...

With Age, Blacks Fall Into Poverty as Their Health Worsens

Abstract: As Black Americans age, the impact of structural long-term economic racism and health disparities converge to offer a dismal outlook for their final years. Black older adults are sicker and more vulnerable to chronic diseases and illnesses than are older...

Incorporating an Anti-Ageist and Anti-Ableist Lens into DEI Work

Abstract: Organizations across industries have rushed to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the wake of George Floyd's murder and ensuing racial justice uprisings. However, many DEI programs lack clarity of purpose and/or clear outcomes,...

On Ableism, Ageism, and the Intersections Between Them

Abstract: The world has experienced an unprecedented increase in average life expectancy and population aging—a revolution in longevity that brings both opportunities and challenges. And for many older adults, aging brings impairments that cannot be avoided. As such,...

Our Guest Editors: Committed to the Case Against Structural Ageism

The two guest editors of SAGE's 2023 Supplement to Generations Journal on Structural Ageism are deep thinkers who have turned their attention to the structures in our society that allow ageism to flourish. Michael Adams has since 2006 been the CEO of SAGE and served...

How Ageism and Ableism Intersect with Gender Bias in Medicine

Abstract: Women disproportionately experience medical gaslighting, especially older women, women with disabilities, and women of color. This article explores the challenges older women, particularly those with disabilities, encounter in obtaining respectful...

About Generations Journal

Generations Journal is the quarterly journal of the American Society on Aging. Each issue is devoted to bringing together the most useful and current knowledge about a specific topic in the field of aging, with emphasis on practice, research, and policy.

Staff

Editor-in-Chief: Leanne Clark-Shirley, PhD
Senior Editor: Alison Biggar

Editorial Advisory Board

Ruth E. Katz, Chair
Wendy Lustbader, Immediate Past Chair

Tobi Abramson, PhD
Joe Angelelli, PhD
Orion Bell, MBA
Fayron Epps, PhD
Mary L. Flett, PhD
Sarah Galvan, JD
Robyn L. Golden, LCSW
Donna M. Lisi, PharmD
Heather Menne, PhD
Najja Orr, MBA, DBA
Winifred V. Quinn, PhD, FAANP, FAAN
Laura Trejo, PhD


ISSN 2694-5126