A study authored by Harvard Pop Center Research Scientist Elyse Jennings, PhD, and her colleagues Margaret Ralston and Enid Schatz, reveals the levels of social support experienced by older adults in rural South Africa after losing a spouse, and/or experiencing a physical limitation or chronic health issue.
The United Nations has declared that we are now in the “UN Decade of Healthy Ageing” (2021-2030) as a way to address the challenges that accompany increasing global life expectancy. Two researchers affiliated with the Harvard Pop Center (David Bloom and Benjamin Seligman) are among the authors of this piece published on voxeu.org that cites the rapidly developed COVID-19 vaccine as proof that complex health crises can be successfully tackled.…
Three researchers (Harvard Pop Center Research Scientist Elyse Jennings, Research Associate Director Meagan Farrell, and former Bell Fellow Lindsay Kobayashi) affiliated with one of the flagship projects at the Harvard Pop Center — Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI) — have published their findings in the Journal of Aging and Health.
HAALSI researchers — including former Harvard Bell Fellow Lindsay Kobayashi, and Harvard Pop Center Research Associate Meagan Farrell, and Director Lisa Berkman — have published a study that finds similar patterning between social disparities (such as differences in formal education, literacy and marital status) and cognitive impairment rates in rural South Africa as observed in many high-income countries.
Ichiro Kawachi, MBChB, PhD, and his colleague Kazuhiro Abe, MD, PhD have written an op-ed in JAMA Health Forum that suggests that differences in standards of care and financing may be partially responsible for what appears to be differing infection rates between nursing homes in Japan and the U.S.
A study by Harvard Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, and her colleague Geoff Hoffman, finds that among those adults who were discharged to a post-acute care setting, such as a skilled nursing facility, the positive association between depressive symptoms and 30-day readmissions to the hospital was reduced.
A study by HAALSI researchers finds that increased and more frequent alcohol consumption among older adults in South Africa is linked with higher levels of sexual risk taking, patterns of behavior that could contribute to the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
A study with former postdoctoral fellow Erika Sabbath, ScD, and Harvard Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman, PhD (on sabbatical 2020-2021) among the authors reports that women who worked for pay during early adulthood and later in life (even if they left the workforce to raise children but later returned) have slower rates of memory decline after age 60. Read about the findings in this piece on Today.com.
A study by researchers affiliated with the population-based study Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI), including Harvard Pop Center Research Scientist Elyse Jennings, PhD, finds that those study participants reporting symptoms of depression were less likely to receive some types of social support, and there were differences according to gender and marital status.
Keeping older Americans in the labor force longer (a financial necessity for many; also good for the economy) may very well depend on improving the quality of their jobs when they are much younger, according to a report authored by Beth Truesdale, PhD, our former Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work, and current research associate. Tune in to this webinar co-sponsored by Brookings Institution and the Kellogg Public-Private Initiative to…
Continue reading “Providing a foundation for older American workers to stay in labor force longer”