Over half of older adults with cancer are hospitalized during their last month of life, putting them at risk for aggressive medical interventions, which are associated with increased symptom burden, lower satisfaction, and poorer quality of life. Recent studies have shown that aggressive cancer care at the end of life, including chemotherapy, multiple hospitalizations, and intensive care unit admissions, are associated with lower hospice utilization and lower quality care.

Nursing is at the frontlines of managing the complex care and management of hospitalized patients with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia (AD). AD is a source of significant morbidity in the older adult population and results in disproportionately higher healthcare costs and rates of hospitalization.1-3 Management of any medical condition or surgical course of care is made more challenging in the presence of AD.

The most commonly-cited estimator of the contribution of diabetes to American mortality is the frequency of its appearance on death certificates as the underlying cause of death. Diabetes was listed as the underlying cause of death on 69,091 death certificates, or 2.8% of total deaths, in 2010.1 However, the frequency with which diabetes is listed as the underlying cause of death is not a reliable indicator of its actual contribution to the national mortality profile.

The population of the U.S. is aging and becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, with projections estimating that nearly one in five individuals over sixty-five will be Hispanic by 2050. Given these trends, improving understanding of the state and determinants of the health among the growing older-age Hispanic population is essential to determining future patterns of health and longevity in the U.S.

Driving promotes older adults’ independence and mobility and improves overall quality of life. However, due to age-related changes and increased chronic conditions, older drivers (i.e., aged > 65) may be at elevated risk of motor vehicle crashes—the second leading cause of unintentional injury death among this population. Currently, little is known about licensing rates among older adults, and the few previous population-based studies of crashes have had substantial methodological limitations.

Public transit access to healthcare facilities is a growing problem for the elderly population in both urban and rural settings and contributes to delayed health seeking behaviors, missed appointments and poorer outcomes. The entire travel chain presents challenges including the transportation modes and the transfer points that together make up the route linking home to healthcare facilities. While the barriers faced by elders are well known to healthcare providers, they are rarely incorporated into studies of actual travel behavior and needed infrastructure improvements.

Hyunjoon Park and Emily Hannum in the Department of Sociology and Population Studies Center would like to request support for the 2015 Summer Conference of Research Committee 28 (RC28, Social Stratification and Mobility) of the International Sociological Association, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania, August 17-19. Specifically, we would like to ask for TRIO support to sponsor sessions related to aging, life course, and inter-generational wealth transfers and savings in the three-day conference.

In this project, we estimate the incidence effects of two types of exogenous shocks to the U.S. pharmaceutical market – supply shocks due to nationwide changes in pharmaceutical production market structure, and demand shocks further along in the supply chain induced by changes in regulated prescription drug coverage requirements. We study these effects in the market for prescription drugs purchased by enrollees in Medicare Part D.

Depression and anxiety (DA) are important dimensions of mental health (MH) with a significant and growing contribution to the global burden of disease. In resource-poor contexts, DA have also been widely recognized as having important implications for demographic events and behaviors such as mortality, migration and divorce, individual productivity, individual/family-level well-being, and overall economic development. Mature adults, defined here as adults aged 45+, are a rapidly-growing subpopulation with key social and economic roles for whom DA and its implications are poorly understood.

We plan to investigate how self-assessed health shapes the appreciation of consumption of people, the marginal utility of consumption. We implement the analysis using data on consumption growth rates and self-assessed health by various groups of the elderly population. The results of the project will tell us how consumption is valued in different health status and how savings responds to changes in health. An additional result of the proposed work will be an assessment of how people view that their health responds to their efforts and their out of pocket expenditures.