Social Determinants of Health for the Global Aging Population in Pandemic and Disaster Environments

From a biopsychosocial perspective, physical and to a lesser extent mental health have been a priority for researchers, policymakers, and healthcare providers relative to social health. The hegemony of physical health weakened during the COVID pandemic as mental and social health also emerged as equally important and at risk at the same time. Not since the 1960s has society attended to the social vulnerabilities of older adults, particularly in institutional settings. For the first time, the urgency of providing care for older adults has transcended physical settings as frontline workers in hospitals, prisons, schools, and other community-based settings, as well as families in their own homes, also emerged as vulnerable. The institutional care workforce faces an ongoing crisis at the same time some countries have restricted migration, posing a threat to in-home and community-based long-term care. COVID has forced healthcare policymakers to prioritize both acute and long-term health issues simultaneously as society tries to regain full functionality. COVID and future natural and unnatural disasters associated with climate change, threats to democracy, discrimination against societal groups based on age, gender, race/ethnicity, religion, and income status promise to challenge us all to acknowledge and act such that our well-being is everybody’s well-being across the life course. We are all aging, and how different age groups fare affects how other age groups fare.

Considering these points, the editors of this research topic invite paper submissions on a range of research, practice, and policy, and public health ethics topics concerning the social determinants of health for global aging populations during natural and unnatural disasters. Specific areas of interest as related to the general research topic theme include but are not limited to:

- Interdisciplinary research to understand the intersection of physical, mental, and social health in disasters and related emergency situations for aging populations;
- Approaches to prevention, management, and intervention across social determinants of health (e.g., life course, telehealth, cross-cultural communication,) related to disasters including but not limited to palliative care and participatory democracy;
--Evaluations of policies that target the social well-being of aging populations in different institutional settings in contexts of disasters;
-Analyses and studies of public health crises affecting older adults drawing upon the goals and standards under applicable ethics codes including the Public Health Ethics Code;
-Impact studies of COVID and other disasters, especially as they relate to social aspects of health for aging populations;
-Exploratory studies examining communication processes within and across institutional settings in the context of pandemic/disaster experience and environments;
-Heightened risks of elder abuse and neglect during disasters;
-Workforce challenges and their consequences for aging populations;
-Lessons learned from experiences during disasters for vulnerable social strata of age, race, gender, and income and their intersection to form underserved populations;
-Theoretical bases for the study and design of interventions targeting social determinants of health-related to pandemics and disasters, including but not limited to Critical Race Theory, Social Identity Theory, Contagion Theory, and the Theory of Planned Behavior and Disaster Preparedness.

We adhere to inclusionary language in describing aging population and this will be a criterion for acceptance (see APA guidelines - https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines.pdf).