Serving LGBTQ+/SGL elders during the novel corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic: Striving for justice, recognizing resilience

ABSTRACT

This reprinted chapter originally appeared in Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 2020, 63[6-7], 607-610. (The following of the original article appeared in record 2021-00510-012.) The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic on March 11 of this year (WHO, 2020). In the time since, it has become clear that the virus carries the greatest risk for older individuals and those living with ongoing medical conditions. As a result of a lifetime of discrimination due to who they love and how they identify, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and samegender-loving (LGBTQ+/SGL) older adults are more likely to experience risk factors associated with serious illness and poor outcomes related to COVID19. It is also not the first time they have encountered a pandemic that threatened their communities and comparisons between the AIDS crisis and COVID-19 have emerged in recent news. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, associated societal ageism and continued social distancing, Black Lives Matter protests broke out across the U.S. 2 months after WHO's declaration, sparked by police brutality targeting Black and African American communities in the wake of George Floyd's death. These two contemporaneous and ongoing social issues have illuminated existing disparities in life, health, and opportunity as well as the insidious and interlocking social causes of these injustices. In light of this unprecedented moment, we find ourselves taking stock and asking what it means to serve LGBTQ+/SGL elders in the context of COVID-19, across intersections of identity and interlocking dimensions of research, policy, and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)