expert panel on caregiving
Dr. Luci Bearon, adult development and aging specialist at N.C. State University, has been named to an 11-member panel of national experts addressing issues related to caregiving.
The Rosalynn Carter Institute for Human Development at Georgia Southwestern State University convened the Building Community Caregiving Capacity panel as part of the newly established Johnson & Johnson/Rosalynn Carter Institute Caregivers Program. Bearon will advise the institute on strategies to build capacity for caregiving through community education.
A social gerontologist, Bearon is an associate professor with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. Also a specialist with the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service, Bearon works with extension family and consumer education agents across the state to teach the public about issues related to older adults and their families. Her current work focuses on educational programming for family caregivers for older adults and for grandparents raising grandchildren.
Bearon and other panel members met with the former First Lady on Aug. 12 in Washington, D.C. The panel is one of several that the Rosalynn Carter Institute has brought together to address a range of caregiving issues. The Rosalynn Carter Institute plans a new book series to follow the panels.
“The desire to provide quality care to those we love is an issue for all Americans,” Carter said. “Through our work at the Rosalynn Carter Institute, we support caregivers of individuals with all kinds of disabilities throughout the life span. By convening a panel of high-level community leaders, I wanted to emphasize the key roles that governmental, civic and business leaders can play in providing and coordinating resources for caregivers in every community throughout the nation.
Quality caregiving is a local as well as national effort,” she added, “and it will take leaders at all levels, working together, to provide quality care and successfully address needs that will increase over the next decades as baby boomers age.”
—Dee Shore
