Due to dramatic changes in the U.S. population's aging demographic, family life educators have begun offering more programming for midlife and older adults. This shift began in the early 1990s, after several family scholars and practicing professionals urged the National Council of Family Relations to revise its Framework for Life Span Family Life Education to include “later adulthood” as a fourth age‐group categorization. Since this revision, family life educators and family scholars alike have gradually expanded their programming and scholarship efforts to address the challenges and concerns associated with midlife and older adulthood. In this article, we review best practices in family life education (FLE) programming for midlife and older adults, including programming needs, program design preferences, and contextual variation. To conclude, we suggest future directions for research on best practices in FLE for midlife and older audiences and recommend using the life course perspective as a complement to the Framework when planning and designing FLE programming to meet the needs of the heterogeneous aging population.

Despite the widespread use of antiretroviral therapy, HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND) continues to be one of the most common central nervous system complications of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). The severity and prevalence of HAND underscores the need for safe, effective therapies to mitigate or eliminate the impacts of the disorder to improve the quality of life of individuals living with HAND. The current study conducted a systematic review of the literature regarding experimental studies of clinical therapeutic interventions for HAND. An electronic search of four databases (PsycINFO, SCOPUS, Ovid MEDLINE, and CINAHL) initially returned 4,280 articles, 31 of which met the inclusion criteria for this study. Articles were selected for inclusion based on several criteria, including the use of a clinical experimental study design and measurement of neuropsychological performance. A large number of studies were excluded due to utilizing observational or cross-sectional designs, relevance, or for otherwise not meeting inclusion criteria. The results of this review revealed 31 articles that investigated both pharmaceutical and cognitive therapies for HAND. Pharmaceutical interventions range from common antiretroviral therapies to novel drug classes with various mechanisms of action. Importantly, this review revealed a number of limitations present in the greater body of HAND research including inconsistencies among methods of diagnosis of HAND and study design, which ultimately make comparisons across studies difficult. This review presents the current evidence that exists regarding therapies for HAND and broadly discusses trends, limitations, and gaps in the literature.

“Gray divorce,” or divorce which occurs in later life, is rapidly becoming more common in the United States. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to examine the lived experience of getting divorced in mid to later life. Data address the following research questions: 1) What are the divorcees’ expectations for the process of divorce and post-divorce life? 2) How do life phase factors and family relationships shape the divorce experience? Participants included 41 heterosexual men and women who legally divorced at the age of 55 or older and between 1-7 years from the time of the interview. Participants divorced from first and higher order marital unions. They included self-identified initiators, non-initiators, and co-initiators of the divorce. Results suggest that gray divorce is a complex experience marked by shifting feelings of ambivalence and certainty that are influenced by such factors as health and social networks, especially family.