Conference Series on Aging in the Americas: United States and Mexico-Renewal

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Project Summary  Hispanic populations in the United States and Latin America will confront critical health issues in the 21st century. In the United States, poverty among older Hispanic individuals is twice as high as that for non-Hispanic whites. Similarly, Latin American countries have parallel issues, including rapid population aging and high poverty rates. Social determinants (e.g., social class, social behaviors, and social networks) profoundly shape the health and quality of life of large numbers of populations, necessitating robust responses from social institutions. Moreover, the interplay of contextual exposures, biological factors, and social dynamics shapes health outcomes across the lifespan. The proposed fifth competing renewal application extends a successful annual conference series on Aging in the Americas (ICAA) that started in 2001. Previous ICAA installments have had a distinctive focus and each resulted in peer-reviewed books and special journal issues as published on the CAA website. The next five installments at The University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida (2025), University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois (2026); Cornell University, Ithaca, New York (2027); University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California (2028), and University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas (2029) build upon the same very high quality of work as previous meetings to address a new theme that is a priority for the national aging and health agenda. This will be accomplished by commissioning 50 papers, including five keynote speakers from sociology, psychology, demography, social policy, medicine, gerontology, and economics to address three primary goals: First, to provide a vehicle for reviewing and analyzing contemporary social research on disparities in “healthy aging” examining the major dimensions of determinants of which are contextual, social, behavioral, and biological as they relate to supporting the health of aging Hispanics; second, to further the development of emerging scholars through their increased exposure to this body of knowledge, developing their research, and career mentoring; and third to foster high-impact publications on healthful aging, extending our research focus to nations in Latin America through cross-national comparisons using the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study (HRS) family surveys in Latin America. The ICAA will foster research using new methods, data, cross-national comparisons, and analyses of the effects of policies and interventions. This installment will emphasize the role of country-specific economic and social policies, as well as institutional contexts, in shaping the health and well-being of older Hispanic population. The new ICAA installments will aim to create an agenda of emerging themes regarding healthy Hispanic aging.Â