A Longitudinal Study of Egyptian Healthy Aging (Al-SEHA)

American University In Cairo, Cairo

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed implementation of A Longitudinal Study of Egyptian Healthy Aging (“AL-SEHA”) modeled after the US HRS and member surveys, is aligned with several aspects of NIA’s mission, particularly “…the development of international comparator studies and harmonization efforts in different social, environmental, cultural, and economic contexts…” AL-SEHA fills a significant void in the international network of harmonized aging studies. As a pivotal constituent of the Middle East and Africa, Egypt has an enormously diversified population, socioeconomically, genomically, and culturally. Egypt is characterized by a strongly SES-graded health and cognitive decline, a large gender divide, particularly for elderly women, and looming challenges for older citizens due to environmental and extreme weather. Despite advances, Egypt’s health and wellbeing landscape includes striking social and economic inequalities and inequities between men and women, old and young, urban and rural communities, and upper and lower Egypt. The project will inform issues of health disparity and extreme weather concerns in a context that is new for the HRS-style aging surveys. While Egypt has a history of cross-sectional population surveys, AL-SEHA will be the first nationally representative longitudinal study of aging in Egypt. This longitudinal dimension will fill a major gap and will provide a better understanding of the dynamics of health dsiparity in a large emerging economy. It will offer unprecedented opportunities to delineate health, social and economic challenges and to develop policy recommendations for this and similar emerging countries and communities. AL-SEHA will be administered to 20,000 individuals aged 50 years and older. It will provide a baseline and a first follow-up wave including a community module, geocoded and comprehensive environmental data. It will also administer a tested and contextually validated tool to measure the prevalence of dementia and cognitive impairment in Egypt, following the harmonized cognitive assessment protocol (HCAP). Three years of preparatory activities have included a review of previous aging studies in Egypt and contemporary changes that show the need and relevance of this work; a pilot to build the capacities of research community and demonstrated scholarly and practitioner interest; a regional workshop that secured policy and decision makers’ commitments; a second pilot funded by NIA subcontract that tested the sample design and demonstrate the facilitation of field work access and execution of high-quality data collection, statistically representative and within planned time and budget; finally a third NIA-funded pilot deployed the HCAP instrument. The studies demonstrated need, feasibility, the ability of the team to undertake the proposed work, and the securing of the essential partnership of the Institute of National Planning (INP), the support of the Ministries of Planning and Economic Development and of Health and the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE).