Aging & Social Change: Thirteenth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

How to provide long-term care for growing numbers of aging adults has been an issue concerning wealthy, post-industrial societies for quite some time now, but the recent COVID-19 pandemic has made this issue jump to the top of the priority list. Traditionally, studies concerned with the organization of long-term care and its provision have focused on the triad state/market/family to understand its different configurations, practices, and best practices. To this point, however, little attention has been paid to geriatricians and their insights. This paper fills this gap by focusing on how geriatric doctors think, talk, and envision improvements to the current system of long-term care provision at the micro-, meso-, and macro-level. Based on qualitative interviews with 30 interviews with geriatricians conducted in Italy and the United States, the paper sketches some potential strategies aimed at reframing how society at large think about aging and long-term care and its provision.