Isaac Shaeffer has devoted himself to a field that most people do not think about until they must. He has worked in elder abuse awareness and policy at the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA), a specialty that exists at the intersection of healthcare, social justice, and what he calls simply "service." It is not the kind of career that announces itself with dramatic interventions or technological breakthroughs. It is quieter than that, more patient, concerned with the accumulation of small dignities and the prevention of small cruelties that, left unchecked, compound into something larger and more devastating.
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Shaeffer's path to gerontology began, as many healthcare careers do, with a more conventional ambition. He was drawn to neuroscience as an undergraduate, fascinated by the mechanics of the brain and motivated by a desire to help people suffering from neurological and neurodegenerative diseases. The appeal was clear: the brain as puzzle, disease as problem to be solved, medicine as solution. But somewhere in his undergraduate years, his focus shifted. He discovered gerontology as a discipline, a field that seemed to ask different questions. Not just how do we treat disease, but how do we address the complex constellation of health issues, social isolation, and systemic challenges that make aging in America more difficult than it needs to be.
By the time he completed his master's degree, Shaeffer had developed what he describes as a passion for helping older adults navigate these challenges so they can continue to live independent and meaningful lives for as long as possible. It is a modest formulation, almost bureaucratic in its plainness, but it contains within it an entire philosophy of care. Independence and meaning: these are not medical outcomes in the traditional sense. They cannot be measured in blood pressure readings or cholesterol levels. They require a different kind of attention, one that recognizes the person inside the aging body, the life that continues even as the body fails.
There was a moment early in his college years that clarified this mission for him. He was providing social support and companionship to a woman who was over one hundred years old. She had medical issues. Her family could not visit often. She was bedridden, approaching the end of her life, and she had grown up in Germany as a little girl. Shaeffer would sit with her and listen to her stories, the long arc of a century compressed into conversation. It filled him with purpose, he says, to consider the impact of caring for people in their later years, especially in a society where ageism is so prevalent that older adults can feel invisible or forgotten.
This is the thing about ageism that Shaeffer emphasizes: it is more prevalent than people realize. It operates quietly, embedded in assumptions about productivity and relevance, about who deserves attention and resources. It has societal costs. It impacts healthcare and quality of life for older adults, and it affects their loved ones who are trying to support them. For Shaeffer, being a healthcare professional means working against this invisibility. It means service and calling. It means working for something bigger than yourself, caring for those who are marginalized by society, in need of healthcare or other services. It is a great mission, he says, and it is always important to remember the greater Why.
He is careful when he speaks to students or early career professionals exploring the field. He tells them to think about the older adults in their own lives who are important to them. To think about creating a better world for them, or for their parents when they are older, or even for people younger than them now who will one day be old themselves if they are fortunate. People in this field, he says, are very passionate about helping others and making a real meaningful impact by improving quality, not just quantity, of life. You have to be compassionate. You have to remember that we will all reach old age someday if we are fortunate.
There is a practical element to his advocacy as well. The demographics are undeniable. There will be more older adults in the coming decades. The need for gerontologists, for people who understand the specific challenges of aging, will only grow. But Shaeffer does not speak about this as a matter of market opportunity. He speaks about it as a moral imperative, a recognition of shared humanity across the lifespan.
What he hopes to see in the future of healthcare is simple and profound: that people recognize the importance of what gerontologists across the field do. That ageism is acknowledged and addressed not as a personal failing but as a systemic problem with real consequences. That older adults are seen and valued, that their lives are understood to matter not in spite of their age but in all their fullness and complexity. Isaac Shaeffer has chosen to do this work, to dedicate himself to a field that asks him to remember, every day, that the people he serves were once young and will not always be here, and that the time they have left deserves to be lived with dignity, independence, and meaning. It is a calling he has embraced with clarity and conviction, and it is one that matters more than most people know.