My uncle, Richard Douglass, has a compelling opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press about the looming crisis the city will be facing due to the ongoing closings of nursing homes.
And now, with the addition of poor and isolated people with late-stage AIDS, MS and other disabling diseases, the frail elderly are sharing space with younger people who are mentally ill and some who are sexually active, and a mixture of patients that boggles the mind.
In Detroit, nursing homes are closing, not because the owners and staff don't want to do the work, but because the work cannot be done without unpaid heroics by the nursing staff.
Rich has researched public health in Detroit for decades, and this essay comes at the culmination of the last several years of his work.
