Supporting family care for older adults: Building a better bridge

The family care gap is a public health imperative and will require strategies at the national, state, and community levels to effectively address. There are emerging strategies to close the impending chasm between fewer available family caregivers and the increasing chronic care needs of an aging US population. In this final chapter of Bridging the Family Care Gap I expand upon some of the key ideas introduced in the book that are central to any family care gap solution. They include: (a) robust consideration of the public health context of the family care gap; (b) policy innovations that could help to bridge the family care gap; and (c) truncating the chasm between scientific evidence and implementation so that when policies are enacted, the services these policies support are of the highest quality possible for family caregivers.