Individuals who identify as transgender (T) and/or gender nonbinary (NB) face various struggles, such as stigma and discrimination, and have a higher risk for mental health, physical health, and economic challenges as compared with those who identify within the binary of male/female and are cisgender.
Getting older has its own challenges including increasing health concerns, navigating services, and maintaining autonomy and independence. For T/NB older adults, accessing adequate healthcare may be particularly difficult. Additionally, there may be fears related to how they may be treated by home health care providers and/or by staff in long-term care facilities. Implications for practice include the need for social workers to have awareness of the diversity within this community and be trained to provide culturally sensitive and compassionate services with a nuanced understanding of gender identities.
CEUs: 2 Cultural Competence Date: Monday, April 20, 2026 Time: 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Location: Zoom Requirements: Webcam (participants must be on camera) Presenters: Jeanne Koller, PhD, MSW, Associate Professor & Paul Urbanski, PhD, MSSW, Associate Professor
Presenter Information:
Jeanne Koller, PhD, MSW came to academia with over 26 years of clinical social work practice experience. Koller is active in issues pertaining to older adults and her research interests include aging and the LGBTQ+ community, grief and loss, social isolation and depression, and social work education. At Monmouth Dr. Koller serves as Coordinator for the School’s LGBT+ Older Adult Project. In the community she is a member of the Alzheimer’s Association LGBTQ+ Steering Committee and is on the Board of Trustees for the VNACJ Community Health Centers.
On a national level, Dr. Koller was appointed for a three-year term to serve on the Council on Social Work Education’s Council of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (CSOGIE) and serves on the Executive Committee for the journal Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping. In the area of trans and nonbinary aging, she co-authored with fellow presenter Paul Urbanski an article on the research they conducted titled “Aging and the Lived Experiences of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Older Adults: An Exploratory Study” which was published in the Journal of Aging and Social Change in 2024. Finally, she wrote a paper published in 2025 titled “Lived Experiences of Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Adults Aged 50+ Shared through Art and Film: Reflections of a Social Work Educator” featured in the journal Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping.
Paul Urbanski, PhD, MSSW is an Associate Professor at Monmouth University’s School of Social Work. He has a doctoral degree from the University at Albany, a master’s degree from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the University of Michigan. Dr. Urbanski’s research examines how older adults experience life transitions. His earliest research focused how older adults maintain personal preferences in long-term care settings and links between resident satisfaction and depressive symptoms.
Continuing with a focus on aging, he recently completed a study on the transition experiences of Korean grandparents who immigrated to the U.S. to help raise their grandchildren. Dr. Urbanski’s more recent research has focused on transgender older adults of color who live under the poverty line and the influence of aging on identity and accessing services. Future research includes developing a study of older adults of color transitioning from prison to the community.
Price:
$40.00