More need for the "old" in new public health research in the Americas

Bibliographic Data

ID14965353
AuthorsMartha Peláez (0000-0003-2992-3792, World Health Organization Regional Office for the Americas, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume13
Issue6
Pages352-4
Publication date2003-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRevista Panamericana de Salud Pública (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1020-4989 • E-ISSN: 1680-5348
PublisherFapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1590/s1020-49892003000500002
PMID12894796
OpenAlexW2061718238
SCIELO_PIDS1020-49892003000500002
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

Research on the health of older adults in Latin America and the Caribbeanhas been neglected in epidemiology and public health. This is of grave con-cern since dramatic changes in fertility and mortality rates in recent decadesensure a rapid aging of the population in the Western Hemisphere. Persons60 and older in Latin America and the Caribbean now make up 8% of the totalpopulation; by the middle of this century that figure will grow to 22%. Inabsolute numbers, the population of older persons will total over 180 millionby 2050. In the coming decades we expect to find poorer health status andgreater disability in the cohorts of persons who survived childhood and adultdiseases. That higher survivial rate is due more to public health interventionsand less to an improvement in their socioeconomic status. Therefore, policy-makers in Latin America and the Caribbean need to understand the correla-tions among different gradients of poverty, access to health care, social net-works, and health in old age. The epidemiology of aging and longevity provides a framework forunderstanding both the risk factors associated with old age and the atypicalmanifestations of infectious diseases in persons with diminished immunity.Elders in Latin America and the Caribbean will often suffer from a complexmix of infectious and noncommunicable diseases, and infectious diseaseswill continue to be an important cause of adult mortality. Thus, we needmore information on the complex interaction of diseases, frailty, socioeco-nomics, and social networks in old age. We still have great gaps in ourknowledge of aging in the Region of the Americas; it is not surprising thatolder persons are underrepresented as a target population in the publichealth literature. The essential functions of public health, including monitoring, eval-uation, and analysis of the health status of older persons, require the devel-opment and use of multidisciplinary research designs (1), new assessmentprotocols, and adequate survey instruments in order to capture the specificcharacteristics of older adults. With the support of the National Institute onAging of the United States of America, the Pan American HealthOrganization is collaborating with researchers in the Americas to developmore efficient data collection instruments and thus promote demographicand epidemiological studies of older persons. Ideally, in the future, infor-mation systems and researchers in different countries will collect compara-ble data on health and aging and therefore produce important insights intothe roles that culture, socioeconomic status, and different institutionalapproaches play in the health of older persons.While aging research in the developed countries has produced a vastscientific literature, much more dialogue among researchers in all the coun-tries of the Americas is needed in order to develop a better understanding ofthe health and well-being of older adults. In this issue of the

Political science · Public health · Aging, Health, and Disability · Chronic Disease Management Strategies · Health disparities and outcomes · Medicine · Nursing

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