Biography: Carol Bradley Bursack
Over the span of two decades author, columnist, and consultant Carol Bradley Bursack cared for a neighbor and six elderly family members. As a result of this experience, Bursack wrote Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories, a portable support group for caregivers.
Minding Our Elders is used as a college text for gerontology and nursing home administration classes. Bursack’s websites Minding Our Elders and Minding Our Elders blog include links to helpful agencies, articles rich with information and comfort, links to support groups, and resources for caregiver, boomer and elder needs. She works as a consultant on aging and caregiving issues.
Bursack’s newspaper column Minding Our Elders has run weekly in multiple newspapers for over 16 years, both in print and online. She is the spokesperson and writer for Egosan.com, is “Ask Carol” on their Egosancares site, and runs their social media. She moderates a paid support group for Dr. Leslie Kernisan’s website Better Health While Aging and writes a monthly column for Herohealth.com. She has also worked with GrandPad.net on a longterm project and has written for HealthCentral.com for over 14 years and for Agingcare.com for over 10 years.
Bursack is frequently interviewed on national radio shows, including NPR's Talk of the Nation; Senior Solutions, produced by Detroit Area Agency on Aging; and Wisconsin Public Radio. She’s routinely interviewed by newspapers, magazines and on major websites, including Reader’s Digest (Digital), Next Avenue, Salon.com, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The USA Today Network, Chicago-based Make It Better magazine, The Upside of Aging, Booming Encore, US News &World Report, Market Watch, and more.
Bursack is a co-moderator on the Facebook sites USagainstAlzheimers and Caregivers Committed to Wellness, as well as a contributor to Caregivers Companion and Joining the Dots on Alzheimer’s.
Besides authoring Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories, she wrote “Swimming upstream in a media library,” a contribution to A Handbook for Media Librarians, edited by Katherine Schopflin, Hardcopy published by Facet, 2008 and online, 2018.
Bursack contributed to Dementia: Frank and Linda's story: New approaches, new understanding, new hope (Lion-Monarch, March 2010); and was a content editor for Finding Joy in Alzheimer’s: New Hope for Caregivers, by Marie Marley, Ph.D. and Daniel C. Potts, MD, FAAN (US 2015).
She wrote a foreword for the second edition of Wishes to Die For: Advance Care Directives that Grant Caregivers Lasting Peace, by Kevin J. Haselhorst, MD, (US 2015) as well as for Caregiving Both Ways by Molly Wisneiwski (August 2019). She is also a contributor to an anthology edited by Marita Golden titled Us Against Alzheimer’s: Stories of Love, Family, and Faith (September 2019).
Bursack is currently working on a book that will include her signature support for caregivers and elders. The book will also delve into the many changes that have occurred in caregiving over the last two decades. She plans to include chapters on living well until we die and death with dignity, with more revealed as the book evolves.