With so many programs and resources for older adults "going virtual" during the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations are faced with questions about how to ensure they are reaching the most vulnerable members of their communities. Tom Kamber, Founder and Executive Director of OATS joins host and CEO of the American Society on Aging, Peter Kaldes on Future Proof to share how Older Adults Technology Services  is bridging the digital divide, helping to ensure that everyone has access to the best technology while embracing the call for racial justice around the country.

Ai-jen Poo is the co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a nonprofit organization working to bring quality work, dignity and fairness to the growing numbers of workers who care and clean in our homes, a workforce that is disproportionately immigrants and women of color. With the help of more than 280,000 domestic workers, NDWA has won a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in nine states and the cities of Seattle and Philadelphia, and brought more than 2 million home care workers under minimum wage protections. In 2011, Poo launched Caring Across Generations, a campaign to address the nation’s crumbling care infrastructure, catalyzing groundbreaking policy change including the nation’s first family caregiver benefit in Hawaii and the first long-term care social insurance fund in Washington State. She is the author of “The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America,” a widely acclaimed book that makes the case for access to care for all families. Peter and Ai-jen will explore the issues of equity and justice and how they intersect with Poo's work around securing a living wage for domestic workers and quality of life for the elders they serve. 

Larry Curley is the Executive Director of the National Indian Council on Aging (NICOA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Curley, who along with members of the National Tribal Chairmen’s Association founded NICOA in 1976, was named a 2019 Influencer in Aging by NextAvenue. In this episode, Peter and Larry discuss issues of equity and justice and how they intersect with Larry's work with older adults in the Navajo Nation and how recently there have been resurgences in racism against members of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico due to COVID-19. 

 In this episode of Future Proof, Peter Kaldes, President and CEO of ASA, talks with Karen Lincoln, associate professor of Social Work and senior scientist at the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Karen explores where her research on social and economic inequality and equity intersects with her community practice work with older African Americans who have Alzheimer’s and other mental health conditions, as well as the impact of the coronavirus on this same population.  

Denny Chan, senior staff attorney at Justice in Aging, addresses civil rights for older adults and how the heterogeneity of this population means paying attention to the intersection between age and other protected identities. Chan and Kaldes discuss how COVID-19 has exposed disparities in our racist healthcare system, LGBTQ protections, and underreporting in healthcare discrimination and the importance of educating oneself about civil rights protections in order to help others.

Peter Kaldes, CEO of the American Society on Aging, talks with Robert Espinoza, Vice President of Policy for PHI, about issues of equity and justice and how they intersect with the work he does as an advocate for the direct care workforce and pushing policy change in long-term care. Espinoza discusses how systemic racism has affected direct care workers and how that might be ameliorated, how immigration policy feeds into the mix of racial and social justice, and his vision for a more equitable and just world, especially as it pertains to caring for older adults.