Dissertation Research: Mind the Gap: The Dynamics and Work of Aging and Caring at Home

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral student Lauren Penney (University of Arizona), under the supervision of Dr. Mimi Nichter, will investigate how the processes at work in aging and home care are affected by such factors as cultural conceptions of aging and health, socio-economic status, and the broader political economy. Her research will focus on home health agencies, direct care workers, and aging older adults and their families as they negotiate the requirements of Medicare-reimbursed home health care. The research will be carried out in southern Arizona. The research will employ multiple methods, including in-depth interviews, job shadowing (of health care workers), participant observation, focus groups, and surveys. She will examine the relationship between Medicare eligibility requirements, views of users of home health care, and the direct care workers' senses of their own professional and moral obligations. The study will explore how older adults (and their families) manage gaps that may emerge between (1) their experience of home as private and a site of the provision of health care, (2) the cultural background and life experiences of themselves and their direct care providers, (3) how older adults are represented in relation to cultural ideals, and (4) their social and health care needs and what is available in the long-term care system. The research will contribute to social science theory of the relationship between formal institutions and the human experience of the life cycle. At this historical juncture, as a new administration takes office during a time of economic crisis, entitlement programs such as Medicare have been targeted for reform. This research will provide a meticulous, in-depth analysis how how the system works at multiple levels of scale and from the perspectives of multiple stakeholder. This will provide policy makers a comprehensive and culturally sensitive analysis of the workings of the current long term care system.