Laura Katz Olson, AGF Distinguished Professor of Political Science, has taught at Lehigh University (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) since 1974. She grew up in the Bronx (NYC) and attended the high school of Music & Art, where she played the violin. She received her bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York and her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She teaches U.S. Health Care Policies, the Politics of Health Care, the American Presidency, and the American Political System. She directs the political science department’s internship program.
To date, she has published nine academic books, focusing on U.S. healthcare, including the frail elderly. The Politics of Medicaid received Lehigh University’s Williamson Book Award in Social Research (2012). Elder Care Journey: A View from the Front Lines, which relates her personal experiences as a caregiver for her mother, won Gold Medals in the Ninth Annual Living Now Book Awards (September 2017) and the Living Now Awards (2017), both in the category of caregiving, and was a finalist in the Sarton Women’s Book Award in the category of Memoir (2016). Ethically Challenged, her latest work, was published in March 2022.
Ethically Challenged: Private Equity Storms U.S. Health Care (Baltimore, Md: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2022).
Elder Care Journey: A View from the Front Lines (Albany, New York: SUNY Press,
2016).
The Politics of Medicaid (New York, New York: Columbia University Press,
2010).
The Handbook of Long-Term Care Administration and Policy, edited with Cynthia Mara
(Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2008).
The Not So Golden Years: Caring Labor, the Frail Elderly and the Long-Term Care Business Enterprise (Boulder, Colorado: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Co., 2003).
Age Through Ethnic Lenses: Caring for the Elderly in a Multi-Cultural Society, ed. (Boulder, Colorado: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Co., 2001).
The Graying of the World: Who Will Care for the Frail Elderly? (ed.), (Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, Inc., 1994).
Public Policy and Aging (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983).
The Political Economy of Aging (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
Laura also has written numerous articles in the field of aging, health care and women’s studies, addressing such topics as Medicaid, Medicare, long-term care of the elderly, private pensions, and the Social Security System. In 2009, she received the Charles A. McCoy Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Political Science section of the American Political Science Association. Olson was elected to serve on the American Political Science Council (two-year term) and is on the editorial board of the journal New Political Science.
She enjoys running, bicycling, backpacking, kayaking, canoeing, cross-country skiing, playing the guitar and gardening. In 2004, she published her first novel, Heart Sounds, and is working on a second manuscript, Wrinkled Rebels.
Her daughter, Alix Olson, is Assistant Professor of Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emery University’s Oxford College, and co-director of its Sexualities Program. Prior to that she had toured internationally as a spoken word artist. She is the mother of Laura’s adored grandchildren, Zinn and Gray. Laura also takes pleasure in grandchildren, Josh, Ellie, Sierra, Alanna, and Cassidy.
She lives with her husband George DeRemer, a luthier and blue grass musician who plays the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and guitar.