2023 CAnD3 Keynote Address: Aging across the Decades: Shifting Perspectives, Promising Directions, Self-Reflections

Anne Martin-Matthews

Professor, Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia

Associate Vice-President, UBC Health, University of British Columbia

Anne Martin-Matthews has a primary research focus on aging, health, and social gerontology. In recent years, she has maintained her research activities while also actively engaged in academic and research administration, serving as the inaugural Associate Vice-President Health at UBC (2019-2022), and the Acting Vice-President, Research, Knowledge Translation and Ethics, for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in Ottawa (2017- 2018). Prior to that, she completed two terms (2004-2011) as the Scientific Director of the Institute of Aging, one of 13 national Institutes of the CIHR. Under her leadership, the CIHR Institute of Aging led the development of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), launched in 2009, a 20-year study of 50,000 Canadians aged 45-85. Since coming to UBC in 1998, she has held positions as Associate Dean Research, Associate Dean Strategic Initiatives, and Dean pro tem in the Faculty of Arts. She has been a member of the Department of Sociology since 2008. Prior to coming to UBC, she was founding Director of the pan-University Gerontology Research Centre, and a member of the Department of Family Studies, at the University of Guelph (1978-1997).

Anne Martin-Matthews’ publications include two books, Aging and Caring at the Intersection of Work and Home Life: Blurring the Boundaries (2008); Widowhood in Later Life (1990); three edited volumes (on methodology; policy development; and Canadian gerontology in an international context); and journal articles and chapters on health and social care, aging and social support, work-family balance, and rural aging. She is the Past President of the Research Committee on Aging of the International Sociological Association (President, 2010-2014). A former Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal on Aging (1996-2000), she is a member of the editorial board of Ageing and Society (UK).

Professor, Department of Sociology, Florida State University

Research Associate, Center for Demography and Population Health, Florida State University

Director, Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy, Florida State University

Miles G. Taylor is a sociologist, gerontologist, and demographer specializing in the areas of physical and mental health, life course disadvantage, population aging, and family dynamics. A secondary area of expertise surrounds applying and teaching longitudinal quantitative methodologies with relevance to life course questions. Her research primarily examines processes of advantage and disadvantage across the life course and their implications for health in older adulthood. Her research has been published in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, the Gerontologist, Journal of Aging and Health, and Social Science
and Medicine and has received funding from the National Institute on Aging, Fulbright, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and the Claude Pepper Foundation. She was recently elected a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), and won the 2017 Busse Research Award from the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) and the 2015 University Teaching Award from FSU.

Janice Keefe

Professor, Department of Family Studies and Gerontology, Mount Saint Vincent University 

Director, NS Centre on Aging, Mount Saint Vincent University

I received my BA in Sociology from the University of Prince Edward Island, my MA in Sociology/Anthropology from the University of Guelph, and my PhD in Family Relations and Human Development in the Department of Family Studies at the University of Guelph.Prior to coming to Mount Saint Vincent University in 1990, I worked in public municipal home care (1986-1990). I am currently a Full Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Studies and Gerontology and hold adjunct appointments at Dalhousie Faculty of Medicine and as a research scientist at the Maritime SPOR Unit.

My research areas include family caregiving policy and practice, home and long term care policy, home and long term care human resources and rural aging. I have been honoured by numerous award for my research contributions, most recently a Global Aging Research Network Award for Applied Research (2017), and Canadian Association on Gerontology’s Distinguished Member Award (2017). From 2002-12 I was the Mount’s first Canada Research Chair in Aging and Caregiving Policy. Currently, I am the Scientific Director of Seniors: Adding Life to Years (SALTY) a national team to improve the quality of life for residents in long term care in Canada (2016-20) and Principal Investigator on How approaches to care shape the pathways of older adult home care clients (2018-22) – both funded by the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR). I am active on numerous advisory boards including Statistics Canada’s Demographic Advisory committee, the European Union’s More Years Better Lives funding initiative and the Canadian Academy of Health Science expert panel on dementia. I enjoy teaching in the Masters and Undergraduate Programs in Family Studies and Gerontology and providing mentorship and supervision to a number of graduate students and post–doctoral fellows.

Amélie Quesnel-Vallée (moderator)

Canada Research Chair in Policies and Health Inequalities

Director, McGill Observatory on Health and Social Services Reforms (MOHSSR)

Professor, Departement of Equity, Ethics and Policy and Department of Sociology, McGill University

I am a medical sociologist and a social demographer. My research seeks to understand how public policies shape the opportunity structure of individuals over their life course, and thus feed into social inequalities in health. This dual interest in social structure and health outcomes is one of the reasons why I occupy an Associate Professor position at McGill with a joint appointment between the Department of Sociology and the Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy. Thus my research fits squarely within the Social and Economic Determinant of Health axis of the Centre on Population Dynamics. Within this broad context, my research follows two main strands. First, using various longitudinal datasets in Canada and the U.S., as well as innovative methodology drawing from the counterfactual account of causality, I highlight some of the life course dynamics that lead to an association between social determinants and self-rated and mental health. Second, I examine the contribution of health policies to health inequalities. While my research on this issue to date has mainly focused on the U.S. and Canada, my current research activities are setting the stage for historical, inter-provincial and international comparisons of this relationship.