Opening Plenary Session: Rice Cookers, Umbrellas and Piety Laws: Preparing for the Silver Tsunami in China

Rapid socioeconomic and political changes within China have caused new questions in methods of support for the well-being of aging populations. Economic shift in the 1980s along with the establishment of a one-child policy has created a new family structure with fewer children to care for older adults. Traditional values of filial piety place expectations to care for older adults on younger generations, but a low birth makes support from a single child difficult if not unreasonable. Despite government efforts to increase birth rates in many provinces, intranational migration for work, changing cultural values, and rising costs of marriage and raising a child have resulted in a larger number of single children unable to provide support fulfilling of filial piety expectations. New filial piety laws and forms of informal shaming supported by local government attempting to encourage filial piety may be too inflexible to accommodate older adults needs and the realities of younger generations. Violence between and within generations of adults will also be a need when addressing support of older generations. Although global movements such as #MeToo have increased awareness of gendered violence, more focus is needed on the continued cyclical effects of all violence in later life. Complexities in changing Chinese society and family structure highlight the importance of including context in studying the needs of supporting an aging population.

XinQi Dong, a (former) professor of Medicine, Nursing and Behavioral Sciences at the Rush University Medical Center and the Associate Director of the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging, has been named director of Rutgers University’s Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research (IFH). In addition to the institute directorship, Dong will serve as the inaugural Henry Rutgers Professor of Population Health Sciences. He will begin April 1, 2018. Dong, a renowned population epidemiologist and health services researcher, has been a strong advocate for advancing population health issues in underrepresented communities worldwide. He has leveraged the principles of community-based participatory research to conduct multiple large-scale longitudinal population-based studies in the United States and China aimed to investigate the intersections of violence, resilience and health outcomes. Dong has published extensively on the topics of violence prevention, culture and health disparities, with more than 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is the editor of Elder Abuse: Research, Practice and Policy, a textbook comprising the largest collection of research, practice and policy in the field. In addition, he serves on many editorial boards and is guest editor-in-chief for the Journal of Aging Health and the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences. Currently, Dong is the principle investigator of eight federally-funded grants and also has mentored many trainees and faculties to success.

Sponsored by: Boston University, School of Social Work, Council on Social Work Education, New York University, Silver School of Social Work, University of Georgia, School of Social Work, University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, The University of Texas at Arlington, School of Social Work, University of California, Los Angeles, Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of Toronto, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work