The Better with Age Initiative at the Institute on Aging created the Gerontology and Education Research Initiative (GERI) to support faculty-led research related to aging.
Dying in Place or Finding a Place to Die? Navigating Supportive Housing for Older People Experiencing Homelessness at End of Life
2026-2027
Faculty:
- Kathleen Conte, PhD - Assistant Professor of Health Systems and Policy
- Susan Avila, LCSW and first-year PhD student at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health.
People aging and dying while homeless live at the intersection of multiple, overlapping systems of oppression. Scant research has been conducted with this population, but the literature that does exist points to tremendous health system inadequacies, characterized by patients’ frequent hospital readmissions and precarious long-term care placements. Older adults are the fastest growing demographic of people experiencing homelessness, yet research has elicited precious few insights into the needs of the most vulnerable among them – those with terminal or life-limiting illnesses. This project seeks to remedy this gap by partnering with people with lived experience and local service providers to produce findings for existing service system improvements.
- Research Question (RQ) 1: What conflicts, barriers and facilitators are experienced by service providers and older people experiencing homelessness (OPEH) with life-limiting illnesses as they seek medically appropriate placement?
- Research Question (RQ) 2: What is the local prevalence of unmet long- term care needs among Medicaid- enrolled OPEH?
- Expected Outcomes and Deliverables:
- First-of-its-kind data, co-produced with service and lived- experience partners, about program efficacy and service utilization patterns of OPEH with life-limiting illnesses in our local region;
- Policy briefs of key findings and priority areas for programmatic improvements across the housing and health system;
- The functional architecture necessary for future collaborative, funded projects with our partners and others to further document and explore the scope of the issue and identify opportunities for expansive, system-wide improvements.
Kathleen Conte, PhD
Susan Avila, LCSW
Immigrant Seniors and Immigrant Carework in Oregon
2025-2026
Faculty:
- Pronoy Rai, PhD. Associate Professor, PSU Geography - Liberal Arts & Sciences
- Alex Stepick, PhD. Professor, PSU Sociology - Liberal Arts & Sciences
This project examines mainstream and culturally specific elder care mechanisms among Southeast Asian immigrants in Oregon, the role of immigrant youth in providing family elderly care, their efforts to become part of the elder care workforce, and the challenges they face to continue to provide care. The project aims to review practices in often-sidelined populations to theorize models for long-term care and supportive housing for older Oregonians. Led by Dr. Pronoy Rai, a geographer, and co-led by Dr. Alex Stepick, a sociologist, the project team includes the Pacific Islander & Asian Family Center of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) as the community partner and Emmanuel Legarretta, a Portland State Sociology PhD student as a Graduate Research Student.
Data will be collected during the 2025 calendar year in the Portland metropolitan region using qualitative research methods, including 1) focus group discussions with immigrant seniors and immigrant care workers, 2) semi-structured interviews with staff at immigrant-serving organizations working with immigrant elders, and 3) follow-up interviews with immigrant seniors and caregivers who were part of the focus groups. The focus population will be the Pacific Islander and Asian American elders from Southeast Asia, including minority groups such as Hmong and Karen. The team aims to analyze the results, publish them in a public-facing report, and present them at a public convening at IRCO.
Exploring the impacts of the Neighborhood Story Project in intentional, intergenerational communities
Completed November 2023
Faculty:
- Amie Thurber, PhD. Assistant Professor, PSU School of Social Work
- Michele Martinez Thompson, MSW. PSU Assistant Professor of Practice and Distance Coordinator, PSU School of Social Work
Introduction:
In 2023, Bridge Meadows staff recruited teams of residents to participate in the Neighborhood Story Project in the Beaverton and North Portland communities. Bridge Meadows is a Portland-based non-profit organization that operates intentional, intergenerational communities for youth formerly in foster care, adoptive families, and elders. Over the course of 12 weeks, staff lead each team to develop a research question about their community, collect and analyze data, and report findings back to the community, with the goal of sparking ongoing action.
Project Goals and aims:
This project will explore the contributions of The Neighborhood Story Project, a 12-week participatory action research intervention designed to increase place knowledge and attachments, social relationships, and self and collective efficacy, to participants living in two Bridge Meadows intergenerational communities. This study is expected to contribute to emergent understandings of the uses of macro therapeutic interventions with older adults in intentional intergenerational and/or age-friendly communities.
Findings:
Researchers from Portland State University evaluated the outcomes for program participants and some members of the broader intentional intergenerational community. Researchers found that most program participants benefited from the program, gaining increased knowledge of community needs/desires, deepened social ties, and strengthened efficacy/civic engagement. While less data is available regarding the broader effects of this program, a sample of attendees at the Neighborhood Story Project culminating event indicate that the project fostered community cohesion and social ties, and increased current community engagement, and generated plans for future civic action. In evaluating the implementation of the program, researchers found that program effectiveness was correlated to facilitator’s fidelity to core design elements of program design, facilitator’s ability to modify the curriculum, and the use of Bridge Meadows staff facilitators. The most significant challenges in implementation related to differences among members’ processing needs, managing conflict, inconsistent attendance, time constraints, and low representation of families. If Bridge Meadows would like to replicate the program in the future, facilitators and participants recommend additional modifications to curriculum for intentional community, the recruitment of intergenerational teams, and the need to address workload concerns of facilitators. This report concludes with additional recommendations from researchers related to project replication and sustaining resident-led initiatives.