Elder Abuse and the Public’s Health

Elder Mistreatment and the Public’s Health grounds the issue of elder mistreatment within the core functions and essential services of public health and addresses skill development using core competencies for public health professionals.

Leading scholars and practitioners in the field of public health and gerontology present key ideas, concepts, and issues in elder mistreatment and link them to core ideas, concepts, and issues characterizing public health issues and public health work.

Elder Mistreatment and the Public’s Health 1) frames elder mistreatment as a public health problem stressing that primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of the problem is well within the scope of work performed by public health professionals; 2) addresses major public policy/public health initiatives as they relate to elder mistreatment (e.g., Healthy People 2020, White House Conference on Aging, Elder Justice Act, Affordable Care Act, ADA); 3) frames elder mistreatment as a global and human rights issue; 4) provides a handbook that supports development of core competencies for public health work to prevent elder mistreatment, and 5) includes a compendium of annotated resources to augment the material presented.