Registration is open for this Zoom seminar event hosted by the Covid-19 Task Force on Domestic Violence and featuring an international panel including NCALL Director, Bonnie Brandl.
October 10, 11 am EST
Register for the event at: bit.ly/covid19seminarseries
About the panelists:
Dr. Jacque Gray, PhD: Choctaw/Cherokee research associate professor and associate director of Indigenous Programs at the Center for Rural Health (CRH) at the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Medicine & Health Sciences. She also serves as director of the National Indigenous Elder Justice Initiative (NIEJI) a national resource center to address elder abuse in Indian Country. In addition, Gray is the lead for the Strong Heart Study Psychosocial Work Group, a longitudinal study of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders in American Indians that began in 1988. She has worked to address health, mental health, and health disparities across Indian Country for more than 35 years and internationally, working with Māori suicide prevention. She participated in the White House Conference on Aging in 2015 to address elder justice issues. Gray received a doctorate from Oklahoma State University in 1998 and has been at UND since 1999. Gray is a member of the Society of Indian Psychologists, she is a fellow of the American Psychological Association.
Bonnie Brandl, MSW: Founder and Director of the National Clearinghouse on Abuse in Later Life (NCALL), a project of End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin (End Abuse). Brandl is a recognized national leader within the elder abuse field and violence against women movement. Brandl has worked in the violence against women movement since 1982 and has been with End Abuse since 1991. She has written national curricula for law enforcement, prosecutors, and victim service providers on elder abuse and facilitated trainings for thousands of professionals throughout the United States. She co-authored a book titled “Elder Abuse Detection and Intervention: A Collaborative Approach.” Her numerous published articles and manuals on abuse in later life have been distributed throughout the country. She received the NAPSA Rosalie Wolf award in 2008 and the IVAT Rosalie Wolf award in 2016. In 2011, she testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. Brandl was a steering committee member on the Elder Justice Roadmap project. Brandl has a Master’s in social work from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She lives near Boulder, Colorado.
Laura Tamblyn Watts, LLB: President and CEO, CanAge. Tamblyn Watts is a lawyer, advocate, researcher, and media commentator. Her work focuses on law, aging, abuse, accessibility, law reform, governance and knowledge mobilization. She has previously served as Chief Public Policy Officer at CARP (Canadian Association of Retired Persons) for the past two years and National Director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law. She currently teaches at the University of Toronto, where she is also a Fellow of the Institute for Lifecourse and Aging. She is a past Chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s National Elder Law section, where she sits as a current Executive member. Laura is a Board member of the National Initiative for Care of the Elderly (NICE) network and facilitates the section on Law and Aging issues. She is a Board member of the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI) and a member of the Investment Funds Institute of Canada’s (IFIC) committee on Seniors and Vulnerable Investors (IFIC). She is one of two Canadian representatives on the North American Securities Administrators Association (NAASA) committee on Vulnerable Investors and a continuing member of the Ontario Securities Commission’s Taskforce on Seniors. Laura is also a Board member of PACE Independent Living, a housing and services non-profit which provides attendant care to persons with physical differences. Laura created and oversaw CARP’s research portfolio and is actively involved with a number of National Centres of Excellence and a wide variety of current research initiatives, including the NICE Network, AGE-WELL and the Canadian Frailty Network. She helped to co-found Canada’s second low income seniors’ legal services center SeniorsFirst BC, located in Vancouver. She received her undergraduate honors degree in Political Science from Queen’s University and her law degree from the University of Victoria. She was called to the BC Bar in 1999.
Bridget Penhale: Reader Emerita in Mental Health of Older People at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Penhale also acts as an independent consultant. With a first degree in psychology, she has been qualified as a social worker since 1981. After a successful career as a social worker and manager spanning some 15 years, she took up her first full-time academic post in 1996 and held positions in both Social Work and Health Sciences. She is recognized nationally in the UK for her work on adult safeguarding/protection and internationally for her work on elder abuse. In 2010 she received the International Rosalie Wolf Award for her work in the field of elder abuse research and practice. Bridget has published material on decision-making and mentally incapacitated adults, social work and older people and extensively on elder abuse. Her research interests include elder abuse, adult protection/safeguarding and domestic violence as well as interests in older women, care of older people and mental health problems relating to older people.
Tony Rosen, MD, MPH: Researcher in elder abuse and geriatric injury prevention at Weill Cornell Medical College and a practicing emergency physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Rosen’s research focuses on improving identification, intervention, and prevention of elder abuse in the ED and other health care settings. His research has explored forensic injury patterns in physical elder abuse, identifying specific, clinically detectable differences between unintentional injuries and those from abuse. In 2014, he was awarded a Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists’ Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) R03 from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and a Jahnigen Career Development Award, supported by the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine, the John A. Hartford Foundation, the American Geriatrics Society, and the Emergency Medicine Foundation. In 2016, he was awarded a Paul B. Beeson Emerging Leaders in Aging Career Development Award (K76) from NIA and is expanding his research to enroll prospectively and evaluate comprehensively victims of physical elder abuse in the ED. Recently, he received an R01 from NIA to explore health care utilization among elder abuse victims using Medicare claims data and data mining / machine learning approaches with the goal of identifying patterns that differ from other older adults to aid in early identification.
Alyssa Elman, MSW: Lead social worker for the multi-disciplinary Vulnerable Elder Protection Team (VEPT) at New York-Presbyterian / Weill Cornell Medical Center. She contributed to the development of this program, which aims to better identify, treat, and care for victims of elder abuse in the emergency department (ED), while also providing an opportunity to gather forensic evidence. She coordinates the everyday operations of the VEPT and serves as a resource for ED and inpatient social workers caring for elderly patients who may have been mistreated. Alyssa also contributes to research pertaining to elder abuse, led by Dr. Tony Rosen. Alyssa received her Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. In 2016 she earned her Master of Social Work degree from Rutgers University with a certification in Violence Against Women and Children.