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.

 

The study involves a consortium including UTMB, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Pennsylvania and the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica Geografia e Informatica in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Other collaborators come from the Institute of Geriatrics and the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico.

 

Wong, a native of Mexico, joined the UTMB faculty in January 2008. She holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Michigan and is the Peaches and Shrub Kempner Distinguished Professor in Health Disparities, a senior fellow of the Sealy Center on Aging and director of the UTMB World Health Organization/Pan American Health Organization Collaborating Center on Aging and Health. To learn more about her work, click here.

 

The WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health fosters research to improve the health of older populations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Of eight WHO collaborating centers on aging/geriatrics, UTMB’s is the only one in North America focusing on aging and health research.