Policy Considerations for a Post-COVID Presidency

By CEO James Appleby, BSPharm, MPH

This week will witness the inauguration of our 46th president, Joseph R. Biden Jr. The Biden transition team has been navigating the normally delicate transition process made even more complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic and an uncooperative outgoing administration.

The new administration finds itself preparing policy responses to multiple policy crises on day one. While acute policy responses will fill the initial weeks of the administration, there are longer-term aging issues that will need to be considered in the year ahead.

Fortunately, GSA has assembled the work of some top scholars to help illustrate many of these issues in the latest Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR), titled “Policy Considerations for a Post-COVID Presidency.”

Through a dozen articles, the journal contrasts the accumulation of advantages for many older adults over the past 50 years — brought about through programs like Social Security and Medicare, as well as technological innovations — with the accumulation of disadvantages for many that are now exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaskie writes in his introduction, “As other papers in this issue point out, a post–COVID-19 presidency needs to revisit the age-based policies and programs that contributed to making the experience of growing older in America so great for so many.”

Our recovery from this pandemic will unfold over many months and years, with many of the lingering aftereffects only being realized slowly over time. Within the pages of the new PP&AR, some of GSA’s top scholars lay out policy prescriptions for confronting ageism, fostering diversity and inclusion, promoting retirement security, and much more. It’s a great way to begin thinking about what’s possible in the years ahead.