Rebeca Wong, one of the nation's foremost experts on aging, has been awarded $3.03 million by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health to continue a groundbreaking study in Mexico. Wong will use the grant for a longitudinal aging study she and collaborators started in 2001.
Her research team will collect current data from thousands of participants and their families about such topics as recent health, chronic conditions and disabilities, lifestyle, medication use, number of children, financial resources, pensions and type of housing.
The Mexican Health and Aging Study, the first of its kind conducted in a developing country, has collected information at intervals throughout the last decade on 15,000 Mexicans 50 and older living in Mexico. The study is designed to allow comparisons with other national surveys of older adults in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, including Hispanics living in the U.S. It has already resulted in publications in a broad range of disciplines, including demography, microeconomics, labor economics, public health, epidemiology and health care policy, both in the U.S. and abroad.
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