ABSTRACT
While the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to 1.4 million nursing home residents in the US, it also has threatened the well-being of 50 million older adults who are aging in their own homes and apartments outside of licensed care facilities. Many older adults today face ongoing challenges in accessing health-care services, home- and community-based services, as well as opportunities to connect with their communities’ social infrastructure and their own private networks of family members and friends. It is especially important that social workers with expertise in aging are involved in community-level responses to COVID-19 to facilitate equity in marginalized and underserved communities and to broaden the reach of community collaborations. Social workers have an opportunity to encourage others to speak and act in support of anti-racist practices and systems change as part of age-friendly community change and aging-focused community responses to COVID-19.
