Editors and Writers

Melanie Haiken - Senior Editor, Cancer channel

Melanie discovered how important it is to provide accurate, targeted, usable health information to people facing difficult decisions when she was health editor of Parenting magazine. She has written about health and family-related issues for magazines such as Health, Real Simple, Woman's Day, Yoga Journal, and websites such as BabyCenter.com, WebMD, and the Blue Cross/Blue Shield websites (aHealthyMe.com, aHealthyAdvantage.com) managed by Consumer Health Interactive. Melanie has held positions as Executive Editor at the Industry Standard and BabyCenter.com, and Managing Editor at San Francisco magazine. She has also worked for San Francisco's renowned Center for Investigative Reporting. One of her feature stories won the San Francisco Examiner's prize for investigative reporting. She has a master's degree in Journalism and a B.A. in English, both from the University of California at Berkeley.

Melanie's experience caring for older people began when she volunteered as a young companion at a local senior center. More recently, she has helped care for her father and mother. Melanie is a single mother of two daughters, so she understands the complicated pressures on the so-called "sandwich generation."

Joseph L. Matthews - Senior Contributing Editor 2007-2011

Joseph has been an attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1971. From 1975 to 1977 he taught at the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, including Social Security, Medicare, and Government Pensions; Long-Term Care: How to Plan and Pay for It; How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim; and The Lawyer Who Blew up His Desk. The original coauthor of Joseph's book on Social Security and Medicare was his mother, Dorothy, who had worked at senior centers for 25 years. Joseph then assisted her with her own care during the later years of her life, arranging her legal and financial documents and helping her move to home care and assisted living as her needs changed.

Barbara Kate Repa - Senior Contributing Editor

Barbara Kate, a lawyer and journalist, has devoted her career to editing and writing about legal issues for consumers. She’s the author of WillMaker (Nolo), best-selling software that enables consumers to write their own wills, healthcare directives, powers of attorney, and final arrangements. She's also an instructor for AIDS caregivers, teaching about legal end-of-life issues and funeral planning, and she recently wrote the content for a website for those searching for long-term care in California.

Early in life, Barbara Kate forged a deep relationship with her grandmother, who taught her the enduring and addictive skill of knitting. New to California twenty years ago, she sought out friendships with older people -- and found hundreds of them when she became president of the Bay Area Funeral Society, a feisty consumer group aiming to stamp out abuses in the funeral industry. She is the resource to whom friends turn first for advice on dealing with legal and personal care issues for aging parents and disabled spouses and partners.

Paula Spencer - Senior Editor, Alzheimer's/Dementia and Just for You channel

Throughout her career Paula's specialized in family life (baby care to elder care to self care) -- from her very first job as an editor of 50 Plus magazine through her most recent post as a columnist for Woman's Day. She's the author or collaborating author of a dozen books, including Momfidence, and her award-winning articles have appeared in Newsweek, Health, Parenting, USA Weekend, and other magazines and websites.

A mother of four, she lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she's also on the advisory board of the science and medical journalism program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Paula earned her B.A. in journalism and American studies at the University of Iowa.

In just the last two years, Paula lost both her parents, in their 80s, to cancer; her father also had dementia and stroke. She says of this time period, "In short order, I experienced just about everything that's on this site, from dealing with their illnesses to selling the family home, moving Dad, advance directives and end-of-life-planning, hospice, death -- and stress."

Leslie Kernisan, M.D.

Dr. Kernisan is a geriatrician at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. She trained in internal medicine and geriatrics at UCSF and is a graduate of Princeton University and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. She's also a member of the American Geriatrics Society.

Dr. Kernisan sees patients at the Veterans' Administration Hospital in San Francisco, where her area of research and clinical interest includes improving the quality of care for frail elderly patients, especially in the outpatient setting.

Kenneth Robbins, M.D.

Kenneth Robbins, M.D. is board certified in psychiatry and internal medicine, and has a master's in public health from the University of Michigan. He is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has had a wide variety of clinical positions, including those which require an understanding of the interface between psychiatry and other medical specialties. His current clinical practice focuses primarily on geriatrics. He also provides forensic consultation, and has extensive experience in working for defense attorneys, judges and prosecutors in criminal matters; and on behalf of both plaintiffs and defendants in civil matters. He is active in both the American and Wisconsin Psychiatric Associations. He has written and contributed to many articles and is frequently invited to speak on psychiatric topics, such as psychiatry and the law; depression; anxiety; dementia; and suicide risk and prevention.

Bruce Raskin - Executive Editor

Bruce brings vast editorial experience to his role as Executive Editor of Caring.com. Much of his work -- at Parenting magazine (where he was editor for world-renowned pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock) and BabyCenter.com -- has been at the opposite end of the age spectrum, helping parents raise their young children. He's written numerous articles and edited a variety of books on family and education topics, and he's written many articles on fly fishing, a sport that he expects will keep him active until his own two adult daughters have to begin thinking about eldercare for him and his wife, an elementary school reading specialist. Bruce earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in business and education.

After seeing his own parents and stepparents experience many of the difficulties of old age -- and having learned the basics of everything from senior health issues to financial matters -- Bruce recognized the importance of providing top-notch information to the burgeoning population of adult children.

Nell Bernstein - Senior Contributing Editor

Nell's writings have appeared on Salon.com and in Glamour, Health, Legal Affairs, Marie Claire, Mother Jones, Newsday, O: The Oprah Magazine, Self, Redbook, and the Washington Post. Nell often writes on family issues and the legal system. Her award-winning book All Alone in the World: Children of the Incarcerated was selected as a Pick of the Week by Newsweek, a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle, and a top-ten Book of the Year by the Online Review of Books. Nell graduated magna cum laude with a degree in comparative literature from Yale University and began her career in journalism by helping her freelancer mom edit stories at the kitchen table.

Nell now lives in Albany, California, with her husband, artist Timothy B. Buckwalter, and their young twins. The twins enjoy playing poker for M & M's with their grandfather, and they plan to let him win a hand on his upcoming 88th birthday.

Sarah Henry - Senior Contributing Editor

Sarah has covered health stories for most of her more than two decades as a writer, from her ten-year stint at the award-winning Center for Investigative Reporting, to her staff writer position with Hippocrates magazine, to her most recent web work for online sites including WebMD, Babycenter.com, and Consumer Health Interactive. Sarah has collaborated on several books, including the popular Dr. Koop's Self-Care Advisor, and her health articles have appeared in a wide range of publications including Modern Maturity, Health, Parenting, Glamour, the Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times Magazine. She holds a B.A. in communications from the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, where she majored in journalism.

Sarah understands the tyranny of distance faced by many adult children caring for their aging parents. Her mother and father are both in their 70s and dealing with health challenges. Although Sarah returns to her hometown regularly, she's grateful that her five siblings -- who include a doctor and a nurse -- live near her parents. Sarah herself lives in Berkeley, California, with her nine-year-old son, whom she hopes will look after her in her old age.

Constance (Connie) Matthiessen - Senior Editor, Life channel

Connie has worked as a healthcare and environmental journalist at the Center for Investigative Reporting, as an editor and writer with Health magazine, WebMD, Consumer Health Interactive, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and BabyCenter.com. Connie's background also includes a B.A. in literature from Evergreen College and an MFA in writing from Warren Wilson College. She has been interested in eldercare issues since shortly after college, when she spent a year caring for elderly people in a nursing home.

Connie, who lives in San Francisco with her three children, considers herself lucky that her parents are still healthy and active as they approach their 80s. They both continue to pursue their passions, including fishing, horseback riding, travel, and spending time with their children and grandchildren, providing living proof that old age -- for all its challenges -- can be a time of inspiration, connection, and adventure.

Camille Peri - Features Editor

Camille has covered health and family issues as a journalist for many years. She was a senior editor at Salon.com, where she was cofounder and editor of the department Mothers Who Think. She coedited two collections of essays, Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood, which was a national best seller and received an American Book Award, and Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race, and Themselves. Camille has also written and edited for WebMD, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, Parenting, San Francisco, and Mother Jones, and has been a book editor for Pearson Education. She has a B.A. in American Studies from the University of California at Berkeley.

Camille lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons. With her children in their teen years and her parents in their 80s, she often feels that she's dealing with the same issues -- driving, safety, scheduling -- with both generations. Her mother survived a heart attack and cancer in 1999, and Camille and her brothers have spent periods providing their parents with round-the-clock care. She recently helped them move into an independent living retirement community, where they have opened -- and are thoroughly enjoying -- a new phase of their lives.

Catherine (Kate) Rauch - Senior Editor, Daily Care channel

Kate has spent more than two decades writing about health for websites and print media, including WebMD, Drugstore.com, the Washington Post Health Section, and Newsday as well as HMOs such as Kaiser Permanente (in the San Francisco Bay Area) and Group Health (in Seattle). Kate holds an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University and a B.S. in cultural geography from the University of California at Berkeley. Kate's degree in geography led her to spend five years working as an archaeologist and anthropologist in Alaska. One of her main activities there was collecting oral histories from Eskimo elders, and she was very moved by the reverence Eskimos have for older people -- the keepers of essential wisdom and skills.

Kate lives in Albany, California with her two children. She is the only sibling of three to live near her 80-something father, enjoying the still developing richness of their relationship as they both get older. Very much a member of the "sandwich generation," she often finds herself driving her son to Little League games one moment, and touching base with her dad about his new pacemaker the next.