PURPOSE Effective strategies to recruit minority elders into health research (e.g., through churches, partnering with community gatekeepers) often involve nonrandom sampling methods. The current study has two aims: (a) to examine some new practices in recruitment of African American elders and (b) to determine the similarities and differences of the volunteers in the Healthier Black Elders (HBE...

BACKGROUND The number of elderly Hispanic Americans is projected to more than double by 2010 and account for 16% of all elders by 2050. The complex health needs and diversity of that growing population poses challenges for planning and delivery of health services. OBJECTIVES The behavioral model of health services utilization was used to examine predisposing, enabling, and need factors associ...

PURPOSE Alaska Natives (ANs) view aging from a holistic perspective, which is not typical of the existing successful aging literature. One of the challenges of conducting research with cultural groups (e.g., ANs) is the lack of data, or research, on culture and aging and its impact on how we view successful aging. This research explores successful aging from an AN perspective or what it means t...

Medication mismanagement is a growing public health concern, especially among elders. Annually, it is a major contributor to emergency hospitalization and nursing home placement. Elders and their caregivers, as healthcare consumers and stakeholders in this issue, are uniquely qualified to inform strategies to improve medication adherence. We conducted a qualitative study to ascertain caregiver ...

The aging of the population is a phenomenon faced by most nations. Growing old is often accompanied by the loss of close companionship which has been shown may aggravate the cognitive impairment of elders. From a qualitative study, key issues emerged regarding unmet needs of elder’s communication that we propose to address with an agentbased communication system. This is a family newspaper thro...

This study explores factors that influence the general well-being (anxiety, depression, positive well-being, self-control, vitality, and general health) of low-income Korean immigrant elders by interviewing 206 older adults living in Los Angeles County and Orange County, California. Ordinary least squares regression results reveal that lack of English proficiency and longer residence in the Uni...

BACKGROUND It is well documented that fall risk among elderly people is associated with poor health and depression. In this study, we set out to examine the combined effects of medical condition and depression status on fall incidents among community-dwelling elderly people. METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out to investigate the fall history of community-dwelling elders involving ...

BACKGROUND It is well established that there are ethnic inequalities in health in the UK; however, such inequalities in later life remain a relatively under-researched area. This paper explores ethnic inequalities in health among older people in the UK, controlling for social and economic disadvantages. METHODS This paper analyses the first wave (2009-2011) of Understanding Society to examine...

In the whole world, the proportion of aged population is increasing day by day. To fulfill Confucius’ philosophy of "treat others' elderly and youth as if they are our family members", we proposed an intelligent web-based agent which is able to conduct daily life conversation with the elders. Based on psychological theory, we classify the participants of the experiment into three types using K-...

Literacy may be a more powerful indicator of brain reserve than years of education. Literacy level may be a proxy for native intellectual capacity or life experience that can compensate for brain damage or provide brain reserve. Alternately, the experience of acquiring literacy skills may in itself change the organization of the brain and increase protection against cognitive decline. However, ...