The author of this conceptual article was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to travel to the United States, Ireland, and United Kingdom to meet with researchers, practitioners, and community agencies and review how support for people with intellectual disability is provided. A specific focus was upon provision of care for individuals who were either…

"Turn and Face the Strain: Age Demographic Change and the Near Future of American Education" outlines a fierce battle looming between the needs of public health care and education. A crisis is fast approaching that makes comprehensive improvement of America's public schools more important than ever. Faced with rapidly expanding…

"Turn and Face the Strain: Age Demographic Change and the Near Future of American Education" outlines a fierce battle looming between the needs of public health care and education. A crisis is fast approaching that makes comprehensive improvement of America's public schools more important than ever. Faced with rapidly expanding…

Purpose: Theories of the policy process recognize that policy proposals are typically generated, debated, redrafted, and accepted for consideration through the gradual accumulation of knowledge within communities of specialists. Thus, to inform long-term care (LTC) reform efforts, we conducted a Web-based survey of 1,147 LTC specialists…

Research on aging has indicated that whereas deliberative cognitive processes decline with age, emotional processes are relatively spared. To examine the implications of these divergent trajectories in the context of health care choices, we investigated whether instructional manipulations emphasizing a focus on feelings or details would have…

Although most Americans know that the U.S. population is aging, they are far less informed about the reality of providing elders with personal care, health care, and social support. Families--particularly women--have always been critical in providing elder care, but the entry of so many women into the paid labor force has made elder care…

The ongoing debates about the future of social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare raise questions about the public's knowledge of the history of social insurance and about the impact these programs have on millions of Americans. In general, public conversations about social policies in the U.S. tend to focus on whether or not…

Purpose: Family caregivers comprise the backbone of long-term-care provision in the United States, yet little is known about how the composition and experience of family caregiving has changed over time. Design and Methods: Data are drawn from the 1989 and 1999 National Long-Term Care Survey and Informal Caregiver Survey to develop nationally…

Purpose: Few international comparisons of health services are performed using microlevel data. Using such data, this paper compares the need for and receipt of assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) in comparable samples in the United States and Sweden, a country with a universal system of community-based services. Design and Methods:…

Discusses the rise in population of Americans over the age of 65, job opportunities available or becoming available in health services areas concerned with older adults, and various training programs (Federal and State) related to working with older adults. (SH)

As of 1985 the population of persons aged 65 or over in the United States numbered 28.5 million. By the year 2000, persons in the 65+ age group are expected to represent 13 percent of the population, and this percentage may climb to 21.2 percent by 2030. In 1985, older men were twice as likely to be married as older women. Sixty-seven percent of…