Perspectives on Productive Aging

Social Work with the New Aged

Lenard W. Kaye, PhD, is professor of social work at the University of Maine School of Social Work and director of the UMaine Center on Aging. During the 2000–2001 academic year, he was the Visiting Libra Professor in the University of Maine’s College of Business, Public Policy, and Health. Previously, he was professor of social work and social research and director of the doctoral program at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

A prolific writer in the field of social gerontology, Dr. Kaye has published approximately 100 journal articles and book chapters and 11 books on specialized topics in aging, including rural social work practice, older men, home health care, family caregiving, controversial issues in aging, support groups for older women, and congregate housing.

Dr. Kaye is the co-principal investigator of the Maine Primary Partners in Caregiving Project funded through the U.S. Administration on Aging, the principal investigator of the Hartford Geriatric Social Work Curriculum Infusion Project at the University of Maine School of Social Work, and principal investigator of the Maine Parenting Relatives Mental Health and Substance Abuse Project.

Dr. Kaye is the former chair of the National Association of Social Workers’s Section on Aging, sits on the editorial boards of Social Work Today, the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, and Geriatric Care Management Journal, and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America. He is currently a member of the National Advisory Committee on Rural Health and Human Services of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.