A Comprehensive Guide to Safety and Aging

This book is a comprehensive survey on safety for older adults. It contains contributions by experts from over a dozen disciplines, including physicians, audiologists, optometrists, mental health professionals, lawyers, occupational therapists, and policy makers. This multi-disciplinary approach provides a new and expansive conceptual framework for health care professionals, students, policymakers, and others who care for older adults, and promotes an understanding of the many challenges that adults face as they age.

This book describes the complex range of issues that need to be considered when safeguarding older adults. We hope that this book will be of benefit to anyone currently working or training to work with older adults, helping them to fully appreciate the many safety issues that can arise. The book will be also be useful for both older adults and their caregivers, helping them to identify and address areas of concern. Our goal is to mitigate injury or other harm through an increased understanding of the risks encountered by older adults. This text will also appeal to professionals and graduate students in the fields of human factors and ergonomics, occupational health, and safety.

Robert J. Wolf, JD, MuP, has a distinguished career in aging, health, law, and philanthropy. He has held leadership roles in t important organizations focusing on older adults, including AARP, New York Academy of Medicine, National Council on Aging and Weill Cornell Medical Center, and continues to advise one of the largest foundations in this field. Bob is a pioneer in the field of elder law, at the Brookdale Center on Aging at Hunter College and at Strauss and Wolf, the nation’s first law firm devoted to eldercare. He has authored publications on aging policy, law, and the rights of caregivers. Bob has a J.D. degree from Brooklyn Law School, an MUP from Hunter College, and a post-graduate certificate in not-for-profit management from the Columbia School of Business.

Barry S. Eckert, PhD, is currently the Provost at Salus University, a graduate school of health sciences that offers professional and graduate degree and certificate programs to more than 1,200 students, both on-campus and around the globe, with more than 14,000 alumni worldwide. Prior to that Dr. Eckert was Dean at two different universities: The College of Health Professions of Armstrong at Atlantic State University in Savannah, Ga., and Long Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y. In addition to his previous roles, Dr. Eckert has written or contributed to several peer-review research publications in cell biology and anatomy.

Amy Ehrlich, MD, is the Associate Chief of the Division of Geriatrics at Montefiore Medical Center and College of Medicine and is board certified in Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, and Hospice and Palliative Care. Dr. Ehrlich has been involved in program design and development in geriatrics education for medical students, residents and fellows at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Ehrlich’s research interests include screening for mild cognitive impairment and dementia in ethnically and racially diverse primary care settings and the prevention of burns and fires in older adults. In her role as Medical Director of Montefiore Home Care, she works with the interdisciplinary home care team to develop innovative disease specific programs which help address challenges in transitions of care in the Montefiore network.