Intersectionality of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture in Neglect, Abuse, and Violence Against Older Persons: Human Rights, Global Health, and Systems Approaches in Pandemics

Morrissey, Mary Beth; Brownell, Patricia; Caprio, Thomas V.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-62122-7_337-1

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…First-person perspectives of leadership as demonstrated by a statewide bar association in New York yield insights about the important role of civil society ( 28 ) in fostering policy deliberations through processes of debate and consensus-building, culminating in final recommendations for certain public health legal and ethics reforms in New York. These recommendations emerged from a broad consensus that the pandemic has exposed and heightened structural racism in the United States, described by some scholars as the racism pandemic ( 2 ), and pre-existing inequities and intersectional health disparities by race, ethnicity and age ( 22 , 29 ). Syndemic theory ( 2 ) advances understanding of interaction and concentration of disease and macro-level sociopolitical and economic forces, including systemic racism and ageism, that have contributed significantly to suffering and mortality during the pandemic, and may guide the formulation of public health policy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a more global policy perspective, while pre-pandemic and historical policy failures at the federal level of government left many nursing homes and nursing home residents more vulnerable to the pandemic ( 22 ), macro-level policy decisions at the state level of government in New York both before and during the pandemic also contributed significantly to the number of deaths, including: (i) historical underinvestment in New York's public health infrastructures and systems ( 23 ); (ii) historical underfunding of nursing homes and levels of reimbursement; (iii) failure to allocate adequate PPE to nursing homes during the pandemic ( 24 ); and (iv) issuance of Executive Orders and Guidance, including the March 25, 2020 guidance directing that COVID positive nursing home residents be transferred from hospitals to nursing homes ( 25 , 26 ), that detrimentally affected under-resourced nursing homes, and most importantly, the nursing homes residents themselves who suffered the trauma of isolation.…”

Section: New York's Pandemic Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Protecting the Public's Health in Pandemics: Reflections on Policy Deliberation and the Role of Civil Society in Democracy

Morrissey

Rivera-Agosto

2021

Front. Public Health

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The COVID-19 pandemic (“the pandemic”) has magnified the critical importance of public policy deliberation in public health emergency circumstances when normal health care operations are disrupted, and crisis conditions prevail. Adopting the lens of syndemic theory, the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on vulnerable older adults suggests that the pandemic has heightened pre-existing precarities and racial inequities across diverse older adult populations, underlining the urgency of needed policy reforms. While the pandemic has called attention to systemic failures in U.S. public health emergency planning at both federal and state levels of government, the important role of civil society in influencing policy decision making and advocating for legal and ethics reforms and social change in a democracy calls for more open dialogue in aging, public health and legal communities and constituencies. To foster this dialogue, one public health lawyer, who is also a bioethicist and gerontological social work researcher and served as chair of the New York State Bar Association Health Law Section COVID Task Force in 2020 (“Task Force”), shares her first-person perspectives on the process of leading the development of a statewide bar's recommendations for policy reforms, including the challenges and conflicts encountered. A hospital-based attorney and clinical bioethicist brings a clinical ethics perspective to the discussions. This first-person contribution discusses the power of constituencies to influence policy deliberation in a democracy, and the implications of the Task Force recommendations for future aging and public health policy, particularly in view of the high suffering burdens and trauma older persons and older people of color have borne during the pandemic.

show abstract