Special Issues:

Thematic issues that are published as a regularly scheduled issue of The Gerontologist.

(2018) Aging in Context
Aging occurs in context. People age within their families, within their homes, within their neighborhoods, and within their societies. Too often, however, characteristics external to individuals are relegated to unexplained variance—the error—of health outcomes. With this Special Issue, The Gerontologist highlights the roles played by the physical and social environments in which people live, directly addressing whether and how neighborhoods affect the way we age. The articles move the field forward conceptually and methodologically. They identify dimensions of neighborhoods that are important to health as well as those that are not, suggest ways to measure neighborhoods, demonstrate how to include elements of neighborhood into sophisticated qualitative and quantitative analyses, and offer information about where interventions are most likely to be effective.

(2017) Aging – It’s Personal
Like people in other professions, gerontologists experience both positive and negative transitions as they age. But, unlike other people, gerontologists have extensive academic knowledge about the issues they are experiencing. This Special Issue examines how our academic knowledge influences the way we understand our own aging experiences and those of our loved ones and how, in turn, our personal experiences can help identify gaps in gerontological research, theory, and practice.

(2016) Veterans Aging
In an effort to further a scholarly, multidisciplinary dialogue about the lives of diverse groups of aging veterans and society’s accommodation to multiple generations of veterans as they move through middle and older adulthood, this special issue contains novel conceptual manuscripts, empirical research papers, and innovative review articles that address this growing population. 

Additional aging veterans research is available in the recently released supplement, Women Veterans in the Women's Health Initiative.

(2015) 2015 White House Conference on Aging 

The White House Conferences on Aging (WHCoA) have played a major role in advancing policy issues of critical importance to older Americans since the first conference was held in the 1961. Plans are underway for the next White House Conference on Aging, to be held in 2015. In an effort to help shape the agenda and theme of the Conference, this special issue contains novel conceptual manuscripts that outline a vision of older adults’ economic and retirement security, health, caregiving, and social well-being for the decade ahead. 

(2015) Successful Aging 
Successful aging has had a long and contentious history among gerontologists. Now more than ever, the sheer number of aging baby boomers makes successful aging a critical public policy issue. This issue of The Gerontologist examines the past and directs future research as we strive to understand how people can experience success in their later years of life.