An Ecological Model of Elder Justice

For the California Elder Justice Coalition's Elder Justice Viewpoints Blog 

​In the thirty-something years I’ve worked in the field of elder abuse prevention, I’ve seen abuse framed and re-framed as a medical syndrome, a caregiving issue, domestic violence, and a public health epidemic. The Elder Justice Act (EJA), enacted in 2010, enshrined abuse as a matter of social justice and individual rights. Although the new frame has been widely embraced, the EJA is narrowly focused and fails to address the myriad other threats (besides abuse) to older Americans’ rights. I wrote Elder Justice, Ageism, and Elder Abuse (Springer, 2019) to explore these threats and what our field can do about them. For more.