October 2022:
The 7th Annual Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) Users workshop was held virtually on October 17-18, 2022. The International Conference is co-organized with the Mexican National Institute of Geriatrics (Instituto Nacional de Geriatría, INGER). The program included 32 oral presentations (18 established investigators and 14 students) representing 17 different institutions in 6 countries. The meeting included attendants from Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Japan, Singapore, and The Netherlands. There were 9 presentations from UTMB scholars. More than 110 people registered to attend the conference, with 60-80 attendants per session.

July 2022:
Rebeca Wong, PhD, has been appointed as the Sheridan Lorenz Distinguished Professor in Aging and Health in the School of Public and Population Health through June 2025. Dr. Wong is a Professor in the School of Public and Population Health; Director of the WHO/ PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health; and Associate Director of the Claude D. Pepper Older Americans Independence Center as well as the Sealy Center on Aging.

April 2022:
The 2022 Population Association of America Annual (PAA) Meeting was held in person and online, April 6-9, 2022. UTMB scholars and past visiting scholars participated in the 2022 Annual Meeting. During this meeting Dr. Downer presented collaborative work with Dr. Samper-Ternent using the MHAS data, “Cohort Differences in Difficulty Performing and Receiving Help for Activities of Daily Living Among Mexican Adults Aged 60–76 in 2001 and 60–76 in 2018”. Also during this meeting, Dr. Sadaf Milani presented another collaborative work with Drs. Wong and Samper-Ternent on “Pain Among Adults Aged 50 Years and Older in the United States and Mexico”.

October 2021:
The 6th Annual Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) workshop for users of the data was co-organized with the Mexican National Institute of Geriatrics (Instituto Nacional de Geriatría, INGER). The International conference was held virtually in October 27-29, 2021. In this edition of the meeting, there were 32 presentations using MHAS data. The workshop had over 100 registered attendees (among them 40 were students) and was held virtually. The meeting included attendants from Mexico, United States, Canada, Chile, Netherlands, and Brazil.

2021
The MHAS started its first baseline in 2001, following up on a cohort of 15,000 persons aged 50 and older in Mexico. The study has refreshed the sample twice since then and has supported several ancillary studies including for exposure to heavy metals, and blood and saliva samples for the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease and biomarkers for other chronic diseases.

February 2021:
Rebeca Wong, PhD was invited by the chair of the NIH Council of Councils to join a newly formed working group of the Council on Behavioral & Social Sciences Research (BSSR) Integration. This special advisory panel of behavioral scientists and other community experts was convened to complete an assessment and provide recommendations on how to better integrate and realize the benefits to overall health from behavioral research at NIH.

January 2021:
Beyond Health: United Nations Announces a New Initiative to Improve the Lives of Older People, Their Families and Communities

Beyond Health: United Nations announced a new initiative to improve the lives of older people, their families and communities. The initiative approaches different aspects of life including health services as well as other aspects of society such as employment and demand for goods and services. Read More: The Decade of Healthy Ageing: a new UN-wide initiative;  United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021–2030)

November 2019:
The 4^th MHAS workshop for users of the data was organized in collaboration with INGER. The International MHAS Users’ conference was held in November 2019 in Mexico City and was hosted by INGER. More than 75 participants attended, including established and junior investigators, whereas students and post-doctoral fellows had the opportunity to attend the workshop.

November 2018:
The 3^rd annual workshop of MHAS users was held in Mexico City in November 2018, co-hosted by the Center and INGER in Mexico. More than 70 scholars from Mexico and the U.S. attended.

July 2016:
Dr. Rebeca Wong, Director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Galveston, and collaborators have just been awarded a 5-year grant from the National Institutes of Aging (NIA/NIH) to complete two more waves of the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS). The study will be funded by the NIA/NIH in the United States and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography in Mexico (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, INEGI).

The MHAS study began in 2001 and is the first of its kind in developing countries. It provides longitudinal information on about 15,000 Mexicans age 50 and older living in Mexico. It is designed to allow comparisons with other national surveys of older adults like the HRS in the US, and other studies in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Researchers will be able to study topics including current health, chronic conditions and disabilities, cognition, lifestyle, employment, number of children, financial resources, pensions, and type of housing. With the additional waves, the MHAS will reach a cumulative count of approximately 6,500 deaths in the panel, making the study an increasingly powerful data resource to examine mortality and aging.

The MHAS has already resulted in more than 220 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. The data files and documentation are available free of charge at the study website [www. MHASweb.org] in English and [www.ENASEM.org] in Spanish. The study user-friendly website provides a dynamic search engine that allows users to find the list of publications using keywords, type of documents, and/or authors. Users can also use a Forum dedicated to Frequently Asked Questions; the Forum is an open space to share knowledge and ask questions to the MHAS community. 

The study involves a consortium including UTMB and The University of California, Los Angeles, in the U.S., and the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía, INEGI), the National Institute of Public Health (Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica, INSP), and National Institute of Geriatrics (Instituto Nacional de Geriatría, INGer) in Mexico. Other collaborators come from the in Mexico. 

May 2015:
Prominent aging researchers met in Mexico City in late May 2015 for a workshop titled "Strengthening the Scientific Foundation for Policymaking to Meet the Challenges of Aging in Latin America and the Caribbean." Scientific research was presented on aging in Latin America and the Caribbean and the similarities and differences around the world. The workshop highlighted the main areas where experts believe research is insufficient and where new research is required. Sponsors of the workshop were The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and The National Academy of Medicine of Mexico.

Source: nationalacademies.org

August 2015:
Rebeca Wong, PhD, director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center at UTMB, received a grant from the NIA for the Mexican Cognitive Aging Ancillary Study.

The project applies an in-depth assessment of cognitive impairment to a sub-sample of the MHAS cohort in Mexico in 2016, to estimate dementia prevalence in the population of older adults in Mexico. There will be similar assessments that will be applied in harmonization across several countries.

February 2015:
Kyriakos Markides, PhD, a professor in the department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health (and an Associated Researcher in the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center) received a grant from the NIA to continue his longitudinal study on aging in Mexican-Americans (H-EPESE), which begun in 1994. During the course of his research and interviews of the same group of Hispanic-Americans, Markides and colleagues documented the "Hispanic Paradox." The population Markides studied had fewer resources and access to services than other ethnic groups, yet they had a better overall state of health. Once the data has been gathered, it will be available through the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA).

Source: Inside UTMB - Markides receives $2.5M for Mexican-American health study

September 2014:
The 7th annual International Conference on Aging in the Americas was held at the University of Colorado at Boulder campus September 23rd through the 25th. The Conference series is funded by an NIA/NIH conference grant (Jacqueline Angel, PI at UT-Austin with co-investigators Kyriakos Markides, Bill Vega and Fernando Torres-Hill). This year UTMB co-sponsored and co-organized the event. Our support came from the P&S Kempner Endowment and the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health at UTMB. Co-organizers of this year's conference were Rebeca Wong (UTMB) and Fernando Riosmena (CU-Boulder).

The theme of this year's conference was: "Health, Social, and Economic Dynamics of Hispanic and Latin American Aging." There were national and international participants: 16 speakers, 3 keynote speakers, and 20 posters. In addition, there was a mentoring session for emerging scholars. Along with the conference there was a one-day Pre-Conference Workshop for users of the Mexican Health and Aging Study data (30 registered participants, mostly pre-doc and post-docs, and a few established researchers). In total, 65 Conference participants were in attendance.

The following participants were awarded prizes for their posters:

1st place - Carlos Diaz-Venegas (Post-Doc, UTMB-SCOA), Family Size and Old-Age Well Being: effects of the fertility transition in Mexico

2nd place - Jacqueline Torres (Post-Doc, UCSF), Gender, Migration, and Old-Age Health: effects of the spousal U.S. migration on the health of older Mexican women

3rd - Joseph Saenz (Pre-Doc, UTMB-PMCH and SCOA), Educational Inequalities and Disability Onset among Older Mexicans

June 2011:
Rebeca Wong, PhD, one of the nation's foremost experts on aging, has been awarded a grant by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health to continue a groundbreaking study in Mexico. Dr. Wong will use the grant to continue a longitudinal aging study she and collaborators started in 2001, the Mexican Health and Aging Study.

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 United States, Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, including Hispanics living in the United States. 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 United States and abroad. Read More >>

Source: UTMB Impact Newsletter.