Special Issues

The concept of “successful aging” was proposed as a framework to broaden the perspective of gerontology from its prior focus on losses that accrue with advancing age to a consideration of the substantial heterogeneity of the aging process. Since that time, many modifications of the original concept have been proposed, most relating to a greater inclusion of social and cultural contexts and varied approaches to the issue of “engagement” as a central component. Scholars have debated what successful aging is and what it is not: is it a theory, a concept, a paradigm, a process, or an outcome? Moreover, work continues in specifying how best to measure successful aging, how large a portion of the population successful aging pertains to, and how to develop policies and programs to promote it.

Among the many challenges our world faces, climate change is one of the most critical. The increasing severity of climate change and its effects are and will continue to influence all aspects of our lives. The aging process is no exception. It is thus with excitement, but also trepidation given the scale of the crisis, that we share with you this very timely Special Issue of The Gerontologist, “Climate Change and Aging.” The superb articles of this Special Issue not only vividly summarize the challenges of climate change to aging using a variety of research methods, but also provide a number of thoughtful recommendations as well as solutions that can help better support older people and the communities they live in. Moreover, this issue's articles lay a path forward to guide all of us as we further consider and grapple with climate change as gerontologists.

The Gerontologist, Vol 63 No. 10 2023, is a special timely issue that asks bold questions about the relationship between the humanities and gerontology and how each have shaped and cross each other’s horizons of research. Humanities scholars have adapted gerontological insights, ideas, data and anti-ageist critiques, while gerontologists borrow from the humanities, its theories, methods, futuristic speculations, and imaginative poetics. Thus, the issue is both a reflexive account of gerontology’s historical roots in the humanities and a critical assessment of current humanities-gerontology perspectives. The response to the editors’ call for papers around the issue’s theme, ‘Interdisciplinary Pathways: Humanities, Arts, and Gerontology’ resulted in a rich scholarly collection that counters the disciplinary and institutional isolation of gerontology and the humanities. Organized into three sub-areas, ‘methodological bridges’, ‘literary visions’, and ‘voices of everyday aging', the articles are fascinating explorations into the meaning and diversity of age, the care and inclusion of older people, and the limits and opportunities for aging well. The collection will also appeal to readers to think beyond typically restrictive conventions of gerontology as a scientific or medical enterprise and the humanities as a convenient but less rigorous auxiliary of arts, stories and images. The editors, Ulla Kriebernegg, Sally Chivers and Stephen Katz are grateful to The Gerontologist and to the authors for this opportunity to publish and disseminate research that contributes to a growing interdisciplinary literature on aging.

Implementation science, defined by the National Institutes of Health as “the scientific study of the use of strategies to adopt and integrate evidence-based health interventions into routine practice”, continues to grow within research, education, and practice-based settings. Gerontology and geriatrics researchers and practitioners have long studied the efficacy of clinical interventions, with the focus on individual adopters. Implementation scientists explore factors that influence the adoption of evidence-based interventions on a larger scale, including characteristics of organizational, political, and cultural contexts. Implementation science has been underutilized in aging research though its application can accelerate the translation of effective programs and policies into practice, including gerontological research of interventions to modify developmental trajectories, improve disease conditions, and promote lifestyle changes. This special issue of The Gerontologist addresses the role of implementation science in aging research, education, and practice, including challenges and considerations for practitioners and researchers, innovative methods, and opportunities for training and education. The collection of 18 articles illustrates how gerontologists use implementation science to plan, evaluate, tailor, scale up, and sustain interventions. Numerous theories and frameworks informed the studies; readers will find resources to adopt an implementation science framework that advances the field of implementation science and gerontology.

Research with adults in middle and later life demonstrates the continuing importance of sexual intimacy. A brief historical search of works published in The Gerontologist reveals little attention to sexuality until recently, but we are now beginning to see scholars tackle the complex intersections of sexual behavior with other aspects of identity, and recognize older adults, including those with cognitive impairment, as active agents in control of their sexuality. The papers in the special issue of The Gerontologist on Sexuality and Aging continue these important trends by giving us insight into the ways that older people negotiate sexual intimacy and expression across the second half of life, and how societal stereotypes about older sexuality continue to influence satisfaction with our intimate lives. They also demonstrate that much more work is needed to incorporate the perspectives of older people, especially those from minoritized identities and from non-Western countries. The papers in this collection represent movement in the direction of integrating the study of sexuality fully into gerontology and point to important directions for future research.

More than 35 years ago, Black Feminist Scholar Audre Lorde addressed the imperative to challenge dominant epistemological frames and methods. The “standard tools” by which most disciplines, including gerontology, have built knowledge are not conducive to shifting our focus from simply documenting disparate treatment, whereby communities of color are often represented through a comparative lens, to equity in health promotion - grounded within culturally- and historically-relevant context. The first call of its kind from The Gerontologist, this special issue offered those with an interest in intersectional scholarship an opportunity to apply non-traditional theories, methods, and analysis to the study of gerontology. The authors in this special section present intersectional approaches to racialized aging and provide us with contemporary modes of interrogating the variation in the minority aging experience while also confirming the importance of disaggregating data. Taken together, these papers reveal patterns and address gaps that are not often reported in gerontological studies of racial/ethnic minority older adults and emphasize the importance of various institutional efforts (e.g., policy initiatives and healthcare interventions) that focus on providing community-specific resources to underserved populations. 

One decade ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) founded its Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (World Health Organization [WHO], 2018). WHO defined successful outcomes in terms of improved functioning of older people, resulting in longer and fewer inequities in healthy life expectancies. However, the report noted continuing knowledge gaps for determining best practices and tools for achieving these aims. The Gerontologist takes on the complexities at the intersection of aging and environment to advance our understanding of how to promote age-friendly environments across a variety of human ecosystems. The papers in this special issue address current progress of age-friendly communities and the relationship between age-friendliness and aging in place. They confront intersectional challenges to age-friendliness and evaluate measurement approaches. They are international in scope and heterogeneous in methodology, representing the range of scholarship on global environments for older adults. They demonstrate the importance of considering the diversity of communities and whether age-friendly initiatives are inclusive. The issue of inclusivity may be the greatest challenge to age-friendliness; until communities can provide the housing, transportation, access to health care and services, and socio-cultural support needed by all the older people living within them, age-friendliness will be incomplete.

Although considerable research attention has been paid to long-term care workforce topics, the editorial team at The Gerontologist recognized that important questions remain, prompting the call, in the fall of 2019, for this special issue on workforce issues in long-term care. We little knew when the call for papers went out that a pandemic would throw a bright spotlight on long-term care, especially nursing homes, making this issue even more timely. The articles in this issue paint a picture of stagnated progress and thorny challenges, but their rich and varied methodologies and perspectives also offer the field some glimpses of optimism that we can leverage diverse approaches to improve long-term care.

The COVID-19 pandemic has myriad implications related to aging and the lives of older people. The need to present a balanced and gerontologically-informed view of the of the pandemic motivated the editorial team at The Gerontologist to invite papers for a special collection entitled “Gerontology in a Time of Pandemic.”  In response, we received 132 submissions from 25 different countries. The accepted papers, as is usual for The Gerontologist, address a broad span of topics, from psychosocial challenges of the pandemic for older people to ageism to intersectionality and inequalities related to COVID-19 impact and response.  The papers in this collection reflect the diversity of our international author base, and the heterogeneity of older people and their experiences of the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has myriad implications related to aging and the lives of older people. The need to present a balanced and gerontologically-informed view of the of the pandemic motivated the editorial team at The Gerontologist to invite papers for a special collection entitled “Gerontology in a Time of Pandemic.”  In response, we received 132 submissions from 25 different countries. The accepted papers, as is usual for The Gerontologist, address a broad span of topics, from psychosocial challenges of the pandemic for older people to ageism to intersectionality and inequalities related to COVID-19 impact and response.  The papers in this collection reflect the diversity of our international author base, and the heterogeneity of older people and their experiences of the pandemic.

Trends in migration, immigration, and refugee movement and resettlement are dramatically changing cultural, ethnic, and age dynamics across the globe. Wars, violence, famine, natural disasters, and the need for work all contribute to the movement of people within countries and across national boundaries. Im/migration trends result in important generational differences in population composition. Such population dynamics have far-reaching implications for the experience of aging and aging care. Dispersal of culturally diverse individuals changes communities and neighborhoods in which people age. Older persons and families confronting age-related disease and disability strain, and are strained by, service systems that are not equipped to meet diverse cultural needs and expectations for care. The papers in this special issue of The Gerontologist address the needs and perspectives of older adults who have experienced im/migration. They illustrate the rich variety of communities in which im/migrants live and the cultural and social ties that support and protect the well-being of older im/migrants despite disruptions inherent in relocating across national borders.

Research at the intersection of technology and aging has grown dramatically over the past few years. The articles in this special issue highlight state-of-the-art conceptual and empirical work regarding the relationship between aging and technology. Each article identifies gaps in the knowledge base and suggests strategies for moving forward.

Aging occurs in context. People age within their families, within their homes, within their neighborhoods, and within their societies. Too often, however, characteristics external to individuals are relegated to unexplained variance—the error—of health outcomes. With this Special Issue, The Gerontologist highlights the roles played by the physical and social environments in which people live, directly addressing whether and how neighborhoods affect the way we age. The articles move the field forward conceptually and methodologically. They identify dimensions of neighborhoods that are important to health as well as those that are not, suggest ways to measure neighborhoods, demonstrate how to include elements of neighborhood into sophisticated qualitative and quantitative analyses, and offer information about where interventions are most likely to be effective.

Like people in other professions, gerontologists experience both positive and negative transitions as they age. But, unlike other people, gerontologists have extensive academic knowledge about the issues they are experiencing. This Special Issue examines how our academic knowledge influences the way we understand our own aging experiences and those of our loved ones and how, in turn, our personal experiences can help identify gaps in gerontological research, theory, and practice.

In an effort to further a scholarly, multidisciplinary dialogue about the lives of diverse groups of aging veterans and society's accommodation to multiple generations of veterans as they move through middle and older adulthood, this special issue contains novel conceptual manuscripts, empirical research papers, and innovative review articles that address this growing population. 

Additional aging veterans research is available in the recently released supplement, Women Veterans in the Women's Health Initiative.

The White House Conferences on Aging (WHCoA) have played a major role in advancing policy issues of critical importance to older Americans since the first conference was held in the 1961. Plans are underway for the next White House Conference on Aging, to be held in 2015. In an effort to help shape the agenda and theme of the Conference, this special issue contains novel conceptual manuscripts that outline a vision of older adults' economic and retirement security, health, caregiving, and social well-being for the decade ahead.

Successful aging has had a long and contentious history among gerontologists. Now more than ever, the sheer number of aging baby boomers makes successful aging a critical public policy issue. This issue of The Gerontologist examines the past and directs future research as we strive to understand how people can experience success in their later years of life.

With this issue of The Gerontologist, we encouraged scholars to reach back and reconsider where we came from, how our science developed, and how the ideas and seminal contributions of our academic ancestors influence how we think about aging today.

The 12 articles comprising this Special Issue of The Gerontologist provide a thought-provoking view of aging as it is being experienced by members of the Baby Boom generation.