A Caged Death: Efforts to Improve Quality of Life and Death for Aging Incarcerated Women

This presentation will explore the direct and indirect impacts of older adult incarceration at both national and local levels. It will highlight preliminary findings from a scoping review on programs available for older adult women with dementia and other chronic illnesses in U.S. correctional facilities. Additionally, we will discuss upcoming work with the Washington Correction Center for Women and the Hope Team, focusing on a needs assessment for aging women and the development of an evidence-based intergenerational elder care program led by peer caregivers. The presentation will also examine the research methodology through Indigenous Research Paradigms.

Presenter:

Tosha Big Eagle is a justice-impacted Indigenous, Ph.D graduate student in the Prevention Science program at Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV). Her research interests include health equity, harm reduction, mass incarceration, gender development, aging, death education, and Indigenous Ways of Knowing. The focus for her research surrounds adult indigenous and BIPOC groups and other vulnerable/marginalized populations. She is currently collecting data for her thesis on culturally grounded harm reduction for Indigenous people. Her hope is to create ways for Indigenous people to build connection and identity through Indigenous ways of knowing to reduce negative health outcomes and the mass incarceration of her people. Big Eagle earned her undergraduate degree in human development, psychology, and addiction studies in 2022 from WSUV. Her research interest stems from lived experience including overcoming childhood trauma, addiction, mental health, and incarceration. She serves as the current lead graduate student researcher for two distinct research teams. The first project aligns with the objective of promoting health equity for low-income rural mothers, while the second project is focused on investigating health equity and the availability of healthcare for aging and older women with dementia and other non-normative disorders who reside in correctional facilities. She has the honor of collaborating with the Hope Team, a grassroots health initiative at the Washington Correction Center for Women. They are working together along with their teams to create an intergenerational elder care program for the aging women inside. Tosha works as a Re-entry Navigator for justice impacted students at Clark College. She is a mother of two, wife, daughter, sister, and friend.

Intended Audience: 

This presentation is appropriate for all professionals working with older adults in carceral systems or those working with older adults who have been released from carceral systems. It is also appropriate for educators, researchers, and students in the field of gerontology, social work, prevention science, public health, and health sciences. Finally, professionals working at the city, county, state, or federal level of government and community developers can gain from a deeper understanding of the direct and indirect impacts of the incarceration of older adults.

 Registration Fee

• OGA members: Free!
• Non-members: $10
• Non-member students/seniors and registrants with limited financial means: $5
• Justice Impacted Individuals: Free! Please email us at [email protected] and we will waive the fee. 

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OGA is a non-profit organization run by volunteers. Events and donations are our main sources of income to fund our educational and networking programs.

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No one will be turned away! If you cannot afford $5 at this moment, please contact us at [email protected] - thanks to the generous donations of OGA members and friends throughout the year, we can cover a small number of registrations for each event.

Please note that we offer CEUs only for our annual conference in October, not for our regular events. However, we are happy to issue a Certificate of Attendance upon request for those who attend this webinar for its entire length. To request one, please send us an email after the event.

PLEASE REGISTER HERE to receive the Zoom link. Should you encounter any difficulties registering online, please don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected].