Summary
The book, Contextualizing Health and Aging in the Americas: Effects of Space, Time and Place, offers new insights into the consequences of growth in and impact of the older segment of aging communities on local economies, employs National Institute of Aging (NIA) data sets for analyses of Hispanic aging populations in Mexico, the Americas, and the Caribbean, and provides a broad array of data and methodologies used in comparative research on Hispanic aging.
Steven P. Wallace is author of the final chapter of the book, Epilogue: Looking to the Future — Priorities for Creating New Knowledge. In his article, he discusses the lack of research on older Latinos, particularly as they comprise a growing proportion of the country’s population. His conclusion says that paying attention to institutional factors that effect lives of Latino elders and improving the health of their overall families and the communities in which they age will not only improve the health of Latinos of all ages, but potentially that of all races and ethnicities.