Dr. T. LeRoy Creamer Memorial Lecture in Gerontology - Dr. Pat Armstrong

6:30PM

Kinsella Auditorium, McCain Hall

Hosted by the Gerontology Department, this year’s Dr. T. LeRoy Creamer Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Pat Armstrong, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at York University, Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. The lecture, ‘Where is the Joy in Nursing Homes?’ will be held in Kinsella Auditorium, McCain Hall on Thursday, October 3rd at 6:30 p.m.

Based on decades of research in Canada and abroad, Pat Armstrong’s presentation seeks to change the conversation from looking primarily at what’s wrong with nursing homes to explore how to ensure they are places that put life into years rather than focusing mainly on putting years into life.

Pat Armstrong held a ten-year Canada Health Services Research Foundation/Canadian Institute of Health Research Chair in Health Services, chaired Women and Health Care Reform, a group funded for more than a decade by Health Canada and was acting co-director of the National Network for Environments and Women’s Health. She was also co-director at York of the Ontario Training Centre, a member of the Board for the York Institute for Health Research and has served as both Chair of the Department of Sociology at York and Director of the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton.  She served as a member of the Technical Committee of the Health Standards Organization charged with developing standards for long-term care and on the Congregate Care sub-group of the Ontario Science Table. She is also a board member of the Canadian Health Coalition and of the Member’s Council, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Focusing on the fields of social policy, of women, work and the health and social services, Pat Armstrong has published widely, authoring or co-authoring such books as Wash, Wear and Care: Clothing and Laundry in Long-Term Residential Care: Critical to Care: the Invisible Women in Health Services Wasting Away; The Undermining of Canadian Health Care About Canada: Health Care and co-edited books such as The Privatization of Care: The Case of Nursing Homes: Health Matters: Evidence, Critical Social Science and Health Care in Canada. Her 2023 edited books are Care Homes in a Turbulent Era. Do They Have a Future and Unpaid Care in Nursing Homes: Flexible Boundaries. In addition, she has published widely in academic journals and popular media. Much of this work makes the relationship between paid and unpaid work central to the analysis.

Her research grants include a 10 year “Reimagining Long-term Residential Care: An International Study of Promising Practices”; “Changing Places: Unpaid Work in Public Places”; “Families and Covid in Long-term Care; and “Learning from the Pandemic. Planning for a Long-term Care Labour Force”. And most of this research has been done in partnership with unions, community organizations and a non-profit employers’ organization.