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Rebeca Wong, Ph.D.

P. & S. Kempner Distinguished Professor in Health Disparities
Senior Fellow, Sealy Center on Aging (SCOA)
Professor, Preventive Medicine & Community Health
Director, WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health

Contact Information:
The University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, Texas 77555-0460
email: rewong@utmb.edu

    Curriculum Vitae                        Publications


Ph.D., University of Michigan
M.A., University of Michigan, Applied Economics
B.S., Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Actuarial Science

Biography:

Dr. Wong is a Mexican scholar who received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1987. She served in the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Georgetown University Department of Demography, and as Associate Director of the University of Maryland Population Research Center. She joined UTMB in 2008 to serve as Director of the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Center on Aging and Health. She is also Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at PMCH, and Senior Fellow of the Sealy Center on Aging. 

Dr. Wong’s research agenda focuses on the economic consequences of population aging, in particular in Mexico and among immigrant Hispanics in the U.S. She has completed recent work on unhealthy lifestyles among elderly in the U.S. and Mexico, poverty and utilization of health services among elderly, international migration and later old age wellbeing, and the impact of the social security reform in Mexico. She was the co-Principal Investigator in the Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS), financed by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health. The study seeks to locate research on Mexico’s unique health dynamics in broad socioeconomic context, and it included a national longitudinal survey of multiple purposes among population of middle and old age. A list of publications and research projects related to the MHAS 2001 and 2003 is available at: https://ispace.utmb.edu/xythoswfs/webui/_xy-42196_1-t_BJih2dwt

Dr. Wong and colleagues’ current research, funded by NIH, includes a project to examine health of elderly in Latin America, a project to examine the impact of past demographic and labor force behaviors on old age economic well being in Mexico; and a study to compare the socioeconomic gradients of health among immigrant populations residing in Los Angeles with those of comparable groups in the sending communities.

Dr. Wong has edited volumes and published in numerous professional journals, and makes presentations regularly at national and international conferences. She has served in various national and global committees including the International Outreach Committee of the Population Association of America, and in the editorial boards of the journals Demography, J. of Aging and Health, and Papeles de Población. She is a founder member and coordinator of the Network for Research on Aging in Latin America (REALCE), and serves the profession in multiple forms including as member of review study sections of the National Institutes of Health.