Midlife and Older Adults and HIV : Implications for Social Service Research, Practice, and Policy

This comprehensive examination of this emerging field of practice includes chapters that examine prevention, family care, vulnerability, inclusion, and the disease process itself.

Get a detailed overview of the social services provided for HIV-infected midlife and older adults, and find out where social work practice with this growing population is headed!

As more potent medications are being developed to treat HIV, people who have contracted the virus are living longer lives than previously expected. Survival means new side effects and increasingly complex issues, now compounded by the diseases of aging. All this presents unprecedented challenges to social service and benefit systems. Midlife and Older Adults and HIV: Implications for Social Service Research, Practice and Policy introduces policymakers and policy analysts, practitioners in the helping professions, and the public to available social services for aging adults who are living with HIV/AIDS. It also addresses midlife and older adults at risk of HIV infection as well as aging persons whose lives are affected by relatives and friends living with HIV.

Midlife and Older Adults and HIV provides a comprehensive examination of this emerging field of practice. Specific chapters examine prevention, family care, vulnerability, inclusion, and the disease process itself. It lays out the broad terrain of future social work practice with HIV-infected elders and elders affected by HIV. The book concludes with reflections on survivorship during the past two decades from six older community leaders living with HIV/AIDS. It also provides current research findings, innovative conceptual models, an invaluable compendium of resource information from the National Association of HIV Over Fifty, and program ideas to address the HIV epidemic within the aging population.

The issues addressed in Midlife and Older Adults and HIV include:

• HIV prevention initiatives
  
• coordination and integration of local service networks
  
• the health, social, and financial risks facing women with HIV
  
• the health consequences of HIV/AIDS and its interactions with normal aging
  
• the use of behavioral reinforcement methods as interventions
  
• perceptions of vulnerability to HIV among older African-American women and the role of intimate partners
  
• and much more!

Midlife and Older Adults and HIV is a comprehensive resource on social services for aging adults who are living with HIV/AIDS. It serves as a record of what is known and what is presently being learned about practice in this constantly evolving field. The book is a call to action for social workers and other human service professionals to anticipate and plan for the emerging needs of persons with HIV/AIDS who are rapidly growing older. The array of topics covered in this volume also makes it ideal as a supplemental textbook in courses on HIV and aging.