While our events calendar may vary, we consistently contribute to aging services, programs, and policies through research dissemination, professional development, and community outreach. Explore our updates to learn about past activities, upcoming opportunities, and the ongoing work that shapes the future of aging.
UPCOMING EVENTS
April 2026: On April 9, from 2:00-3:00 PM, the UC Consortium on Aging will hold the next Research Connections. This webinar will spotlight the work of Blanca Equihua-Félix and Laurent Reyes.
April 2026: On April 7, from 4:00-6:00 PM in Haviland Commons, The Center for the Advanced Study of Aging Services (CASAS) will host “Equity Across the Lifespan: A Career Symposium on Aging,” along with the Practicum Education Program. During this symposium, practitioners and students will discuss career pathways and the challenges and opportunities of creating and delivering inclusive services, programs, and policies for all older adults, their families, and support systems.
This event will feature an intimate, interactive discussion (World Café style) and reception. Food provided!
Featured speakers include 1) Luke Barnesmoore from Front Porch Community Services and Marin County’s Commission on Aging’s Homeless Policy Steering Committee, where he focuses on homesharing and housing policy for older adults, 2) Lizette Suarez from Well Connected Español, a bilingual phone and online community program at Front Porch that offers older adults free support groups, social activities, and educational workshops, 3) Shanette Merrick from The Good Life, a community-based organization that provides vital health and wellness support to Black and Latine older adults, 4) Alisha Parrish from Alameda Adult Protective Services, which investigates reports of abuse, neglect, exploitation, and self-neglect involving older adults and dependent adults with disabilities to ensure their safety and connect them with essential community resources, 5) Dani Soto from Openhouse, an organization dedicated to providing housing, direct services, and community programs to San Francisco Bay Area LGBTQIA+ older adults, 6) Cathy Spensley from the Felton Institute, whose mission is to transform quality of life and promote social justice to accelerate community led change, 7) Miki Lamm and Michelle Dowds from Seniors At Home, whose mission is to help older adults age with respect and dignity through home care services, and 8) Harrison Linder from LeadingAge California, and state’s leading advocate for quality, mission-driven housing, care and services for older adults.
PAST EVENTS
March 2026: On March 7, CASAS Director Angie Perone participated in the International Symposium on AI and VR in Education, Healthcare, and Well-being, sponsored by the University of Berkeley and Osaka University. Angie presented on Policy on AI in aging research and gerontological education in the United States.
March 2026: On March 3, Vincent Luong, MSSW, LCSW, ACHP-SW, CCM, OSW-C, SUDP, joined the Center for a virtual conversation on Death and Dying, focusing on supporting families during End-of-Life care. Luong is an oncology social worker at the University of Washington Medical Center with 18+ years of hospital-based experience across inpatient and outpatient settings. He supports patients and families through serious illness care, including goals-of-care support, discharge planning, crisis intervention, counseling, and bereavement support in close collaboration with interdisciplinary teams.
February 2026: On February 2, Rocío Calvo, Professor at the Boston College School of Social Work and the founding director of the Latinx Leadership Initiative (LLI), presented her work Understanding Belonging: How Social Services Shape Older Latino Immigrants’ Incorporation Later in Life. This work, drawing on more than 200 in-depth interviews with older Latino immigrants from six countries, explores how individuals navigate social services later in life in Massachusetts and Florida—two states that represent sharply contrasting models of social protection—and how this shapes their sense of belonging in the United States.
January 2026: Fellow members of the UC Consortium at the California Council on Gerontology & Geriatrics (CCGG) and CASAS co-hosted a “research connections” series where researchers speed-share and highlighted their work in aging. The inaugural webinar, was January 29, 2026, featuring CASAS Director Angie Perone, along with Jingran Ji (UCLA), Pauline Delange Martinez (UC Davis), and Krista Harrison (UCSF). It will be moderated by Jarmin Yeh (UCSF).
January 2026:CASAS PhD Graduate Research Assistant Leyi (Joy) Zhou will presented three papers at the 30th Annual Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Conference. Specific presentations included:
Community safety solutions for safer neighborhoods: A case study of the California Bay Area
Navigating transnational caregiving: Exploring the decision-making process among the Chinese only-child generation
Sole caregiving from afar: Reconceptualizing transnational caregiving among Chinese only children in the United States
December 2025: CASAS Visiting Post-Doctoral Researcher Leixuri Urrutia-Pujuna presented Basque on Trial: Legal Conflicts, Identity, and the Fight for Linguistic Rights in the Basque Country at the inaugural UC Basque Conference at UCLA.
November 2025: CASAS team members presented research about policy on diverse health and aging, social justice for aging centers, conflicting rights in nursing homes, LGBTQIA+ rural aging, long-term care in Taiwan, civic participation, and solo caregiving among Chinese-only children at the Gerontological Society of America’s (GSA) Annual Scientific Meeting. Specific presentations included:
Angie Perone, AGHE Faculty Award Presentation and Lecture, November 12, 2025
Angie Perone, Current Research Opportunities, and Recommendations for Diverse Health and Aging, November 12, 2025
Laurent Reyes, In Their Words: African American and Latine Immigrant Older Adults (Re)Define Civic Participation, November 12, 2025
Angie Perone, Framing Equity and Social Justice in a New Era for Aging Centers, November 13, 2025
Angie Perone, Street-Level Bureaucracy and Documentation: Addressing Conflicting Rights in Nursing Homes through Care Plans, November 13, 2025
Leyi (Joy) Zhou, Sole Caregiving from Afar: Unpacking Transnational Caregiving Among the Chinese Only-Children in the U.S., November 13, 2025
Mo’e Yaisikana, Aging in Democracy: Accomplishments and Challenges of Long-Term Care Policy in Post-Authoritarian Taiwan, November 15, 2025
Angie Perone, Challenges and Opportunities for LGBTQ+ Older Adults in Rural California, November 15, 2025
Leyi (Joy) Zhou, Social Isolation and Technology Usage Among Mexican American Family Caregivers for Alzheimer’s Disease Patients, November 15, 2025
June 2025: CASAS Director Angie Perone and visiting scholar Leixuri Urrutia-Pujana presented work on conflicting rights in nursing homes and climate change and caregiving at the annual Transforming Care Conference at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
April / May 2025: CASAS Director Angie Perone presented findings with doctoral student Leyi (Joy) Zhou and community partners from the HOMES Coalition, Openhouse, and Front Porch about community-engaged research projects on homesharing collaborations and LGBTQIA+ housing and health at the annual conferences for the American Society on Aging in Orlando, FL and LeadingAge California in San Diego, CA.
March 2025: CASAS co-sponsored an event with the Center for Research on Social Change (part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues), Latinx Research Center, and the Department of African American Studies, featuring Dr. Laurent Reyes’s work, which presents three new definitions of civic participation, derived directly from participants’ conceptualization and applied across their lived experiences. Definitions present civic participation as a responsibility of community belonging; as a religious/spiritual practice; and as a way of life. These definitions provide new perspectives by which to study civic participation and challenge current framing of helper and needy, altruism, the voluntary nature of participation, and the separation between social, political, and spiritual participation.
NEWS
January 2026: CASAS Visiting Post-Doctoral Researcher Leixuri Urrutia-Pujuna is a contributor to the 2026 Gender Justice Summit taking place at UC Berkeley.
November 2025: CASAS Director Dr. Angie Perone will be receiving the Rising Star Early Career Faculty Award from the Academy of Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE) at the Gerontological Society of America (GSA)’s annual conference in November 2025. This award recognizes new faculty whose teaching and/or leadership stand out as impactful and innovative.
October 2025: CASAS has partnered with CareYaya and The Good Life (TGL) – a community-based nonprofit in Oakland dedicated to advancing healthy aging in minoritized communities – on a project to develop an AI tool that advances food justice and positive health for older adults, particularly older adults of color. The project focuses on both increasing AI literacy among older adults and developing a culturally responsive tool that expands TGL’s capacity in its food justice and healthy aging programs.
July 2025: CASAS PhD Graduate Student Researcher Mo’e Yaisikana was selected for the Association for Gerontology Education in Social Work (AGESW) Gerontological Social Work Pre-Dissertation Fellows Program. This program provides doctoral students committed to the field of aging with the training and mentoring necessary to prepare them for a career as a gerontological social work faculty member.
June 2025: Dr. Perone was invited by the San Francisco Bay Area Times, an LGBTQ+ News and Calendar for the Bay Area, to publish an Op-Ed related to our LGBTQ Aging with Pride Focus Group project. Here, Dr. Perone shared the story of a participant named Chicharita and outlined the daily challenges and experiences faced by the transgender community.
You can read the op-ed, titled Elevating Voices, Awareness, and Support for Transgender Older Californians, on San Francisco Bay Area Times’ website by clicking the underlined link above.
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