Leutz and his colleagues offer the most practice-oriented and realistic assessment of how chronically ill elders are being served at the community level. They analyze options and opportunities open to policy makers and practitioners relative to long-term care in the community environment where so many elders want to be. In the process, the authors evaluate the range of needs, the importance of gender and cultural differences, and the effectiveness of Medicare and Medicaid as entitlement strategies.

Community care constitutes a major gap in the nation's health-care system. The authors show that there are many persuasive reasons to build, staff, manage, and pay for high quality community-care systems. Such programs are demonstrated to be affordable and to meet better the needs of a large percentage of elders who require long-term care. The authors set forth goals for community-care systems and criteria for assessment. This timely analysis, coupled with practical, socially compelling recommendations, responds effectively to the realities of an aging population and the great public policy and related fiscal concerns.

The book starts by asking what is creative aging? And suggests it involves a long process that grows from all of life's experience, if you have the courage to learn the lessons given to you by your own unique life journey. It shows how difficult it is to age positively in a culture that denies and denigrates aging. At age 85, the author, Ruby Abrahams uses her own experience and that of others she has known, to suggest ways of examining the life experience, so that lessons can be learned. Thus, older people become 'elders' growing in their own wisdom and contributing with that wisdom to their families and communities.