Dr. Gaynell Simpson, assistant professor of social work, will serve on a panel of caregiving experts at the 2018 Aging in America Conference hosted by the American Society of Aging. The conference will be held in San Francisco March 26-29.
The panel’s session is part of the conference’s Diversity Summit and titled “Inequality Matters: Focus on Diverse Caregiving Communities.” The summit will be from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. We
dnesday, March 28.
During the summit, caregiving experts will discuss the roles played by race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, faith, spirituality, agism and socioeconomic and sociocultural status in caregiving. The summit also will highlight current innovative and inclusive models and practical solutions, and discuss what else is needed in the realms of advocacy, policy and legislation to grow and sustain diverse caregiving communities.
Dr. Simpson’s group presentation is titled “Defining Diverse Caregiver Communities.” She will share findings from her recent paper on skipped generation households of African-American grandmother caregivers. She calls this group the most marginalized of caregivers, and likely the most distressed, due to their complex intersection of identities and caregiving demands. Dr. Simpson also will speak about how older African-American grandmother-headed households respond when faced with consistent and inconsistent social support from family and community.
Other panelists will include Donna Benton, research assistant professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC) Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Family Caregiver Support Center, and Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen, professor of social with and director of the Health Generations Hartford Center of Excellence at the University of Washington.