Jeanne Shea, Ph.D, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Vermont has been awarded a Fulbright faculty research grant to conduct ethnographic research on caregiving for the elderly in China.  Dr. Shea will be working with colleagues in the Sociology Department and the Fudan-Harvard Medical Anthropology Research Collaborative at Fudan University in Shanghai.  Her research will center on participant observation and qualitative interviews with Chinese families and local experts in urban and rural communities to examine the meanings, experiences, practices, and social dynamics of family-based eldercare among the spouses, adult children, and daughters- and sons-in-law of elderly people needing care in China today.  In addition, Shea will look into trends in the availability, necessity, and acceptability of extra-familial eldercare options and the extent and ways in which some elders and their families are turning to various informal and formal alternatives to supplement or, at times, replace family-based care.  “It's such an exciting time to have the opportunity to do this research!”, said Dr. Shea,  “ With the US having just passed health care reform in 2010 with long-term care provisions planned for the future but faced with uncertainties of a double dip recession and with China having launched its own health care reform plan in 2009 and facing its own increasing needs for LTC in the face of resource limitations despite double digit economic growth, there are going to be a lot of exciting gerontology-related social and political changes happening in both places over the next several years.”