2016 AAAS Annual Meeting (February 11-15, 2016)

February 10 - 15, 2016

Global Variation in Health and Aging: Cultural Contexts and Quality of Life

This symposium examines global variation in human health, with an emphasis on aging, cultural context, and quality of life. A bio-cultural perspective encourages the use of similar instruments across populations to gather comparable data, and directs attention to how resource availability and social environment influence general health and symptom frequencies. The first presenter will focus on the World Health Organization’s Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE). SAGE is a longitudinal study of adults aged 50 years and older, and a smaller comparison group of adults aged 18 to 49 years, drawn from China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa. The second presenter will discuss epidemiological insights gained from the cross-cultural design of SAGE, and describe anthropological studies on caregiving, aging, and quality of life in Kenya and Rwanda. The third presenter will compare women’s health across Bangladesh, Mexico, and the U.S., with a focus on urinary incontinence and other health-related concerns that are under-discussed but distressing, affecting quality of life during midlife and aging. The session explores health, aging, and quality of life within cultural, political, and economic contexts.