Posted on July 30, 2024 by Amanda Cerreto
Ian Johnson, assistant professor of social work at UTSA, has been named a visiting emerging scholar with Wayne State's Institute of Gerontology/ Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research (MCUAAAR).
Johnson will spend a week at Wayne State University in October to further his research on minority aging. Wayne State is a nexus for this multi-disciplinary research, and a respected leader among the 18 National Institute on Aging (NIA) funded Resource Centers for Minority Aging Research (RCMAR) through MCUAAAR.
Initiated in 1997, the RCMAR program was created with a specific focus on enhancing the health and well-being of older racial and ethnic minorities through dedicated research, training, and community engagement.
The percentage of single adults aged 50 or older experiencing homelessness has climbed steadily, from 11 percent in the early 1990s to approximately 37 percent in 2003. That percentage has grown to almost 50 percent in the 2020s, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
In response to these shifts, Johnson started the Research and Supportive Care for Unhoused People in Later-Life (RASCAL-UP) Study in partnership with the nation's first mobile outreach team for those simultaneously experiencing homelessness and serious illness. Recent publications from this study focus on identifying patterns in where older people experiencing homelessness receive care, illustrating how place attachment shapes health when experiencing homelessness and readying the homelessness service sector for population aging.
The visiting scholarship will allow Johnson to explore cross-national opportunities to consider housing as health justice and environmental design, and to contribute his own scholarship to the conversation. A visiting scholarship also raises UTSA’s profile across the nation.
In addition to colloquiums and scholarship dialogue, Johnson will participate in site visits with community-based research programs in the Detroit metro area. Johnson will also present his research to a group of 100 older adults who are also engaged in this type of research, living in Detroit.
“It will include folks who are on existing community advisory councils, and they'll consult and guide me through a community-engaged research proposal,” Johnson said. “It’s an opportunity to speak with older adults before submitting a proposal.”
The opportunity to work with a community-engaged organization like MCUAAAR is not taken lightly by Johnson. The center, specifically focused on black elderhood amongst Detroit gentrification, offers parallels to San Antonio that Johnson plans to use in his research.
"We can recontextualize their successes and translate that to San Antonio,” Johnson said, “and because the NIH has given us money for our own center, we can really model off what successful centers have done. There’s a big opportunity to develop cross-institutional research partnerships that advance aging scholarship."
Before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2022, Johnson spent nearly a decade working as a clinician in community mental health spaces.
“I was in these spaces that were not meant for older people, that still had all these older people,” he said. “It became my interest and my motivation, and there’s such little research about it.”
The visiting scholarship will allow Johnson to work directly with other scholars with directly-aligned interests – a rare opportunity for a new professor and for this research space.
“Dr. Johnson brings penetrating questions and much-needed fresh perspectives to framing and addressing long-standing challenges around housing precarity as it affects minoritized older adults,” said John Bricout, chair of the Department of Social Work. “His projects engage community members, academics and service providers in developing nuanced programs of research, and sustainable interventions that have garnered him national attention as an emerging scholar of note, and as a sought-after collaborator. His time as a visiting scholar at a preeminent national center for community-based research will no doubt lead to more fruitful insights, dialogue and exchange, to benefit aging members of our communities that are too often overlooked and underserved.”
Johnson hopes to leverage this opportunity into more funded research opportunities to underscore the importance of building solutions around the problem of housing precarity for older adults, particularly here in San Antonio.
“On a local level, we know our there are more older adults who need low-income rent than currently exists,” Johnson said. “That disproportionately impacts black and Latino, older adults.”
As the nation struggles with increasing rates of homelessness, and laws across the state criminalize sleeping in public, the problem is likely going to continue to grow – making research like Johnson’s even more important.
“Becoming housing precarious starts a domino effect,” he said. “Things that keep us safe, like health and social networks, start to erode and it becomes harder to find stability again.”
— Amanda Cerreto
