SFU expert on senior care and World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (June 15)

SFU gerontology professor emerita Gloria Gutman can speak to the timely issues of senior care and the need for improvements highlighted during the current COVID-19 pandemic, to mark World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (June 15).

Gutman worked to secure the designation for the official United Nations day back in 2006 when she and Ryerson University professor Elizabeth Podnieks, who undertook Canada’s first survey on elder abuse, discussed the idea with the World Health Organization’s Office on Aging. At the time Gutman was a special advisor to the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse.

The first director of SFU’s Gerontology Research Centre, Gutman has studied aging and seniors for more than three decades and is currently president of the North American Chapter of the International Society for Gerontechnology.

Gutman recently wrote on the issue of elder abuse and neglect during, and in the aftermath of, COVID-19. She led a webinar with the BC Community Response Network and will be doing another in June. She says the pandemic has put frail seniors, long-term care and institutional neglect “back on the radar.”

Gloria Gutman, SFU Gerontology Research Centre, 604.767.2009, gutman@sfu.ca