Ethics and Vulnerable Elders – The Quest for Individual Rights and a Just Society

Through a uniquely multidisciplinary lens, Ethics and Vulnerable Elders: The Quest for Individuals Rights and a Just Society employs a highly principled approach to ethics and addresses current issues affecting vulnerable older adults. The book illuminates the current and future challenges facing older adult populations and provides effective frameworks for their resolution.

The text features 19 chapters written by experts, which are then divided into four sections. The opening chapter introduces the framework for the book and addresses key concepts in ethics. Each of the four sections that follow addresses a particular category of vulnerability, namely compromised health, effective status, care arrangement, and abuse, neglect, and exploitation. Specific topics include cognitive impairment, physical disability, gender, sexual orientation, residential long-term care, self-neglect, correctional settings, victimization, and more. Each chapter includes a summary; case study; discussion of applicable principles of ethics, including autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice; resources for follow-up; and questions for further consideration.

Ethics and Vulnerable Elders is an ideal resource for law school and graduate school programs with focus on gerontology, disability, social work, public health, elder and family law, and health care management.

Pamela Teaster holds a Ph.D. in public administration and public affairs from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She is a professor and the director of the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Tech. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Georgia Anetzberger holds a Ph.D. in applied social sciences from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). She is a consultant in private practice, adjunct faculty in medicine and social work at CWRU, and a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Candace Heisler holds a J.D. from the Hastings College of the Law at the University of California, San Francisco. She was a prosecutor for 25 years and now is a national trainer and consultant in the areas of domestic violence, elder abuse, and abuse in later life.