Public Awareness

In 2007, the Clearinghouse on Abuse and Neglect of the Elderly at the University of Delaware Center for Community Research and Service (CANE-UD) was awarded a four year cooperative agreement to carry out Public Awareness activities for the NCEA, and to serve as Co-Manager of the NCEA in support of the AoA/NCEA Director.

The goal of this project is to advance the work of the elder abuse field by increasing national awareness of elder abuse and of resources and services available through the NCEA.  CANE-UD plans to achieve this goal through the following major activities:

• Engaging national and local spokespersons to broadcast messages of elder mistreatment
• Engaging the media to publicize issues related to elder abuse;
• Developing a detailed social marketing plan for strategically mounting a national elder abuse awareness campaign to allow state and regional entities to access materials in order to  launch local public awareness campaigns;
• Creating an inventory of existing public awareness tools, products, and campaigns;
• Collaborating with state, regional, and national organizations to create and disseminate public awareness vehicles, such as public service announcements;
• Launching a “Youth Movement” to engage young people in elder abuse prevention;
• Developing and disseminating fact sheets, issue briefs, and educational and outreach materials that are customizable for states and local communities;
• Producing and disseminating a monthly, electronic NCEA newsletter to highlight public awareness initiatives, promising practices, emerging research, state and federal news, and to announce funding and educational opportunities; and
• Annually compiling and publishing an annotated bibliography of published research in the field of elder abuse, and maintaining an on-line annotated index of elder abuse literature online (available at www.cane.udel.edu).