Nancy Hooyman: Advancing Public Policy for Care Justice

This commentary explores the career trajectory of eminent feminist gerontologist, Dr. Nancy Hooyman, leading to her conceptualization of a care justice framework. Dr. Hooyman's scholarship focuses on older women, family caregiving, community-based services, multigenerational policy and practice, and feminist gerontology. She entered gerontological social work viewing caregiving as a personal trouble addressed through individual solutions. Her awareness of structural inequities facing family caregivers grew as her scholarship shifted to conceptualize long-term care as a feminist gerontological issue. Her work advocates for fundamental, structural, and transformative changes to policies that affect home and community-based services (HCBS). She challenges pervasive Western values of familism, privatization, deregulation, and individualized risk built into long-term care to ask the question, how do we create a society characterized by care justice? Throughout her career, the interconnections between those who perform the critical work of long-term care - underpaid direct care workers and unpaid families - has become increasingly clear. This has culminated in the conceptualization of care justice, which values care work as skilled, important, and an essential public good and reimagines our care infrastructure. Pushing the bounds of gerontology, Dr. Hooyman's work continues to inspire scholars who seek to transform community-based care for older adults.