Longitudinal Study of Mexican American Elderly Health

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application seeks funds to conduct one more in-person follow-up of the Hispanic EPESE (Established Population for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly) during 2015-16. The baseline was originally conducted in 1993-94 when a representative sample of 3050 Mexican Americans aged 65 and over residing in the Southwestern United States (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and California). At Wave 5 in 2004-05, a total of 1167 subjects then aged 75 and over were re-interview along with a new sample of 902 subjects also aged 75 and over drawn from the same region using similar procedures. The combined cohorts were followed up in 2007 (Wave 7, N=1542), 2010-11 (N=1078), and 2012-13 (Wave 8, N=744) when they were 82 and over. In 2010-11 we also interviewed 925 informants/caregivers of our subjects, two-thirds of whom were their adult children. We plan to re-interview the surviving subjects in 2015-16 and expect to have at least 500 aged 85 and over. We also plan to re-interview an informant/caregiver for each subject most of whom were interviewed in 2010-11. Thus in addition to following up our subjects to investigate predictors of mortality, disability, change in cognitive function, and institutionalizaion we plan to predict changes in caregiving arrangements over a five-year period. We are especially interested in how declines in the condition of the older subjects will be associated with changes in caregiving arrangements as well as the physical and psychological well-being of the caregiver. As in the 2010-11 contact we plan to contact the elderly subjects first and then their close family members we interviewed at that time. For deceased subjects we will obtain proxy interviews from close family members, most of whom are likely the caregivers we had interviewed. These reports will be confirmed with National Death Index (NDI) data as we have done throughout the study. Our study addresses a gap in the Mexican American family caregiver literature which has been mostly limited to small cross-sectional samples. As we have done in the past we will continue archiving our data with NACDA (National Archives of Computerized Data on Aging) and to encourage their use for doctoral dissertations, peer review publications and R03, R01, and other applications to NIA and other institutes by students and colleagues here at the University of Texas Medical Branch, the University of Texas at Austin, and at other institutions.