Abstract:
This report documents a meeting of leading experts on elder mistreatment (EM) held jointly by the National Institute on Aging and the National Academy of Sciences on June 22, 2010. The meeting was called to summarize the state-of-the-science in EM, identify gaps in knowledge, and elaborate upon the types of work needed to advance the science since the National Research Council’s 2003 landmark publication Elder Mistreatment: Abuse Neglect and Exploitation in an Aging America. While NIA’s primary interest is to advance research in the field, presenters’ remarks were wide-ranging including comments on infrastructure development, funding, and criminal justice issues. Four categories of salient outcomes were noted: (1) There is a need for interventions at all levels of the EM field including prevention, keeping abused elders in their own homes, clinical interventions, and legal/criminal justice interventions. (2) Measurement issues in EM have developed significantly, based upon NIA’s funding of methodology development grants, and the field is ready to advance to a national prevalence/incidence study under the direction of agencies whose mission is closely aligned with prevalence/incidence detection such as CDC or DoJ. (3) Financial fraud was identified as a significant problem with too little research being conducted on determining detection and prevention strategies. (4) Finally, more general issues such as research involving EM in minority populations, career development of researchers in the field, and funding issues related to EM were discussed and identified as warranting greater attention and investment. (Author Abstract)