The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics is pleased to announce our 2025 annual conference: “Law, Healthcare, and the Aging Brain and Body.” This year’s conference is organized in collaboration with Nina A. Kohn, the David M. Levy Professor of Law at Syracuse University College of Law and the Solomon Center Distinguished Scholar in Elder Law with the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School and Francis X. Shen, Professor of Law, Solly Robbins Distinguished Research Fellow, and Faculty Member in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, with assistance from Caitlyn Tabor from the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior.
As people around the world live longer, existing systems for supporting older adults are facing increased stress. Social safety net programs face growing costs, family caregivers find themselves simultaneously caring for multiple generations, and healthcare systems face patients with increased complexity. Healthcare systems and political structures will need to adapt to this new reality. Current legal, policy, and regulatory approaches seem poorly matched to address these emerging issues.
Fortunately, new scientific understanding of the aging brain and body can guide lawmakers, healthcare professionals, and families as they respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by increased longevity.
This conference will therefore call on participants to imagine how law, public policy, and healthcare entities can create systems that promote the well-being of older adults and their families in a world of enhanced longevity, and to suggest what lessons can be drawn from emerging scientific understandings of the aging brain and body. The conference will produce a book that explores the legal, policy, and ethical challenges and opportunities of aging.
Editors: I. Glenn Cohen, Nina A. Kohn, Francis X. Shen, Susannah Baruch