scholarly journals Age of Migration and the Health Status of Older Latinos: Findings From the Health and Retirement Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 454-454
Author(s):  
Blakelee Kemp ◽  
Marc Garcia

Abstract Life course research emphasizes the importance of considering how early life experiences set individuals on specific trajectories over time with implications across multiple health domains. Life experiences of older Latinos are shaped by where they were born and, for the foreign-born, when they immigrated to the United States. Prior research examining the extent to which age of migration is associated with health has largely been limited to regional studies. To address this gap in knowledge, we use nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine associations between age of migration and multiple physical health outcomes among older Latinos residing in the United States. We examine 2010 prevalence and follow-up incidence to 2016 of cardiovascular issues, diabetes, one or more activities of daily living (ADLs), one or more instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), cognitive issues, and mortality incidence. Preliminary results indicate similar health profiles across Latinos who migrated in early life (<18), during adulthood (18-34), and during later adulthood (35+). Most health profiles were similar among Latino men and women except for prevalence and incidence of experiencing difficulties with at least one ADL. Latino women who migrated in later-adulthood have higher prevalence of ADLs and women who migrated early in life (>18) have higher ADL incidence than Latino men who migrated during the same life course periods. A greater understanding of the how immigrant experiences influence physical health outcomes offers important insights into the development of actionable and culturally appropriate social and health policies.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S684-S685
Author(s):  
Dae H Kim ◽  
Elisabetta Patorno ◽  
Ajinkya Pawar ◽  
Hemin Lee ◽  
Sebastian Schneeweiss ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: There has been increasing effort to measure frailty in the United States Medicare data. The performance of claims-based frailty measures has not been compared. Methods: This retrospective cohort study included 2,326 community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries who participated in the 2008 assessment of the Health and Retirement Study. The claims-based frailty measures developed by Davidoff, Faurot, Segal, and Kim were compared against clinical measures of frailty (gait speed, grip strength) using correlation coefficients and health outcomes (e.g., mortality, hospitalization, activities-of-daily-living disabilities) over 2 years using C-statistics. Results: The Davidoff, Faurot, Segal, and Kim indices were negatively correlated with gait speed (-0.19, -0.33, -0.37, and -0.37, respectively), but age and sex adjustment variably attenuated the correlation to -0.17, -0.22, -0.18, and -0.33, respectively. The corresponding correlation coefficients with grip strength were -0.17, -0.27, -0.35, and -0.24, which attenuated to -0.09, -0.14, -0.05, and -0.23 after age and sex adjustment, respectively. The models that included age, sex, and each of Davidoff, Faurot, Segal, and Kim indices showed C-statistics of 0.67, 0.71, 0.71, 0.75 for mortality (versus C-statistic for age and sex: 0.66); 0.59, 0.64, 0.63, 0.70 for hospitalization (versus C-statistic for age and sex: 0.58); and 0.64, 0.63, 0.63, 0.70 for activities-of-daily-living disabilities (versus C-statistic for age and sex: 0.61), respectively. Conclusions: The choice of a claims-based frailty measure results in a meaningful variation in the identification of frail older adults at high risk for adverse health outcomes. Claims-based frailty measures that included demographic variables offer limited risk adjustment beyond age and sex.


2020 ◽  
pp. 109980042096888
Author(s):  
Rosa M. Gonzalez-Guarda ◽  
Allison M. Stafford ◽  
Gabriela A. Nagy ◽  
Deanna R. Befus ◽  
Jamie L. Conklin

The health of Latinx immigrants decays over time and across generations. Acculturation stress influences decays in behavioral and mental health in this population, but the effect on physical health outcomes is less understood. This systematic review synthesizes findings from 22 studies that examined the influence of acculturation stress on physical health outcomes among Latinx populations in the United States. The Society-to-Cell Resilience Framework was used to synthesize findings according to individual, physiological, and cellular levels. There is mounting evidence identifying acculturation stress as an important social contributor to negative physical health outcomes, especially at the individual level. More research is needed to identify the physiological and cellular mechanisms involved. Interventions are also needed to address the damaging effects of acculturation stress on a variety of physical health conditions in this population.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Richard Schweid

This introductory chapter provides an overview of home health care in the United States. Most Americans over sixty-five want to grow old at home, but the reality is that to do so, the majority of them will eventually need someone to help with what are called activities of daily living, those things basic to maintaining life, like eating, bathing, and using the toilet, and with the instrumental activities of daily living, such as cooking and cleaning. The millions of women employed as aides to help the elderly with these tasks in the United States are treated as menial laborers, paid minimum wage, often with no benefits, although the job they are doing is critically important to both our personal well-being and that of society as a whole. Given the low pay and stressful work, it is not surprising that home health aides have one of the highest turnover rates of any job. This book then analyzes what is wrong in the current system of providing home care to the elderly and how those deficiencies might be remedied.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri ◽  
Katrina Kezios ◽  
Scott Zimmerman ◽  
Sebastian Calonico ◽  
M. Maria Glymour

Research on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) is hampered by the absence of studies including prospective follow-up from early life through older ages when ADRD is diagnosed. This is a notable gap in the United States and impedes research on lifecourse determinants of ADRD and ADRD disparities, many of which appear attributable to early life experiences. In this simulation project, we evaluate a matching method to create a synthetic lifecourse cohort by merging early and late life cohorts on a set of harmonized covariates. We evaluate performance under several causal scenarios for the association between our exposure and outcome, and varying characteristics of the matching method. In scenarios when a measure is available along all pathways linking exposure and outcome, the synthetic cohort performs well, with bias approaching null as the number of matching levels increases. This approach may create novel opportunities to rigorously evaluate early- and mid-life determinants of ADRD and ADRD disparities.


10.2196/13837 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. e13837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sepideh Modrek ◽  
Bozhidar Chakalov

Background The #MeToo movement sparked an international debate on the sexual harassment, abuse, and assault and has taken many directions since its inception in October of 2017. Much of the early conversation took place on public social media sites such as Twitter, where the hashtag movement began. Objective The aim of this study is to document, characterize, and quantify early public discourse and conversation of the #MeToo movement from Twitter data in the United States. We focus on posts with public first-person revelations of sexual assault/abuse and early life experiences of such events. Methods We purchased full tweets and associated metadata from the Twitter Premium application programming interface between October 14 and 21, 2017 (ie, the first week of the movement). We examined the content of novel English language tweets with the phrase “MeToo” from within the United States (N=11,935). We used machine learning methods, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression, and support vector machine models to summarize and classify the content of individual tweets with revelations of sexual assault and abuse and early life experiences of sexual assault and abuse. Results We found that the most predictive words created a vivid archetype of the revelations of sexual assault and abuse. We then estimated that in the first week of the movement, 11% of novel English language tweets with the words “MeToo” revealed details about the poster’s experience of sexual assault or abuse and 5.8% revealed early life experiences of such events. We examined the demographic composition of posters of sexual assault and abuse and found that white women aged 25-50 years were overrepresented in terms of their representation on Twitter. Furthermore, we found that the mass sharing of personal experiences of sexual assault and abuse had a large reach, where 6 to 34 million Twitter users may have seen such first-person revelations from someone they followed in the first week of the movement. Conclusions These data illustrate that revelations shared went beyond acknowledgement of having experienced sexual harassment and often included vivid and traumatic descriptions of early life experiences of assault and abuse. These findings and methods underscore the value of content analysis, supported by novel machine learning methods, to improve our understanding of how widespread the revelations were, which likely amplified the spread and saliency of the #MeToo movement.


2018 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 1053-1061 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence D Hill ◽  
Joseph L Saenz ◽  
Sunshine M Rote

Abstract Objectives Although research suggests that religious involvement tends to favor longevity, most of this work has been conducted in the United States. This article explores the association between religious participation and all-cause mortality risk in Mexico. Methods We used data from the 2003–2015 Mexican Health and Aging Study (n = 14,743) and Cox proportional hazard regression models to assess the association between religious participation and all-cause mortality risk. Results Our key finding is that older Mexicans who participate once or more per week in religious activities tend to exhibit a 19% reduction in the risk of all-cause mortality than those who never participate. This estimate persisted with adjustments for health selection (chronic disease burden, activities of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, cognitive functioning, and depressive symptoms), several potential mediators (social support, smoking, and drinking), and a range of sociodemographic characteristics. Although we observed considerable health selection due to physical health and cognitive functioning, we found no evidence of mediation. Discussion Our results confirm that religious participation is associated with lower all-cause mortality risk among older adults in Mexico. Our analyses contribute to previous research by replicating and extending the external validity of studies conducted in the United States, Israel, Denmark, Finland, and Taiwan.


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire K. Ankuda ◽  
Deborah A. Levine ◽  
Kenneth M. Langa ◽  
Katherine A. Ornstein ◽  
Amy S. Kelley

This study assesses patterns of caregiving, death, and recovery after incident disability in older adults. We used the Health and Retirement Study to follow of a cohort of adults age ≥65 years in the United States with incident disability in activities of daily living (ADLs) or instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs; n = 8,713). Rates of care and function state were assessed biennially: deceased, nursing home dwelling, at home with paid help, at home with both paid and unpaid help, at home with unpaid help, at home with no assistance and recovered. In the 2 years after incident disability, 22.1% recovered and 46.8% died. Transitions between care and function states occurred frequently, with more than 20% of the cohort living at home with no assistance despite disability at least once. This study demonstrates the high levels of care and function state fluctuation and unmet needs after functional disability.


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