Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded pre-existing inequities in older adult care, both in the United States and globally, and heightened risks of suffering, serious illness, elder abuse, and death in older adult communities and populations, especially among older Black and Brown people and Latinx living in nursing home settings. The dual lenses of public health and syndemics provide a structural perspective on social and economic determinants of health and multiple disease epidemics that have contributed to older adult vulnerability and detrimental health outcomes during the pandemic, including policy and government failures. This chapter will examine both global health and U.S. health policy in pandemic contexts, as well as the roles of U.S. federal and state governments in the public health and long-term care policy making process. The implications of policy failures for older people of colour and vulnerable older communities and populations will be addressed, especially for nursing home residents who have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.
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Notes
- 1.
Mary Beth Quaranta Morrissey, PhD, JD, MPH, served as chair of the NYSBA’s Health Law Section Task Force on COVID-19 and played a lead role in the conceptualization, writing, and editing of the COVID-19 Task Force Report and Resolutions approved by the NYSBA House of Delegates on November 7, 2020. Morrissey also served contemporaneously as co-chair of NYSBA’s Health Law Section Public Health Law Committee. The full September 2020 Task Force Report, drawn on for the purposes of this chapter, is available at: https://nysba.org/app/uploads/2020/09/Health-Law-Section-COVID-19-Report-September-20-2020.pdf.
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Morrissey, M.B.Q., Brownell, P. (2023). Global and U.S. Policy Perspectives on COVID-19 and Impacts on Older Adult Care and Older People of Color: Syndemic Theory and Public Health Strategies for Palliative Care. In: Shankardass, M.K. (eds) Handbook on COVID-19 Pandemic and Older Persons. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1467-8_22
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