Progress and future challenges in aging and diversity research in the United States.

In 2016, the UC Davis Latino Aging Research Resource Center and UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Center brought together experts from across the country to consolidate current knowledge and identify future directions in aging and diversity research. This report disseminates the research priorities that emerged from this conference, building on an earlier Gerontological Society of America preconference. We review key racial/ethnic differences in cognitive aging and dementia and identify current knowledge gaps in the field. We advocate for a systems-level framework for future research whereby environmental, sociocultural, behavioral, neuropathological, genetic, and psychometric levels of analysis are examined together to identify pathways and mechanisms that influence disparities. We then discuss steps to increase the recruitment and retention of racial/ethnic minorities in aging studies, as none of the recommendations will be possible without strong collaboration between racial/ethnic minority communities and researchers. This approach is consistent with the National Institute on Aging Health Disparities Research Framework.

Publicly Funded Family Planning: Lessons From California, Before And After The ACA's Medicaid Expansion.

California has a long tradition of providing publicly funded family planning services to low-income residents. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) increased contraceptive coverage in 2012, and in January 2014 it extended Medicaid eligibility by increasing the income cut-off from 100 percent to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and allowing individuals without dependent children to enroll. We assessed the impact of the ACA's Medicaid expansion on low-income Californian women's receipt of health insurance and needed health care, including contraceptive counseling and prescription contraception, using data for the period 2013-16 from 4,567 women ages 18-44 with low incomes (less than 138 percent of poverty). After the ACA expansion, the proportion of uninsured low-income women in California decreased significantly, while the share enrolled in Medicaid increased. However, the proportion of the women who reported using health care and family planning services remained unchanged. Despite the ACA's explicit attention to contraceptive services, improvements in the delivery of family planning services have yet to be fully realized in California.

Education, bilingualism, and cognitive trajectories: Sacramento Area Latino Aging Study (SALSA).

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the influence of education, country where education occurred, and monolingual-bilingual (English/Spanish) language usage on late life cognitive trajectories in the Sacramento Area Latino Study on Aging (SALSA), an epidemiological study of health and cognition in Hispanics, mostly of Mexican origin, age 60 and over (N = 1,499). METHOD: SALSA followed a large cohort of older Latinos for up to 7 assessment waves from 1998 to 2007. Global cognition was assessed by using the Modified Mini Mental State Examination, and the Spanish English Verbal Learning Test was used to measure episodic memory. Education, country of origin, and language usage patterns were collected at the baseline assessment and used as predictors of longitudinal trajectories of cognition. Parallel process mixed effects models were used to examine effects of education and language variables on baseline cognition and rate of cognitive decline. RESULTS: Mixed effects longitudinal models showed that education had strong effects on baseline global cognition and verbal memory but was not related to decline over up to 9 years of longitudinal follow-up. Differences in education effects between subgroups educated in Mexico and in the United States were minor. Monolingual-bilingual language usage was not related to cognitive decline, and bilinguals did not significantly differ from monolingual English speakers on baseline cognitive scores. CONCLUSIONS: Hypotheses that higher education and bilingualism protect against late life cognitive decline were not supported and education effects on late-life cognitive trajectories did not substantially differ across U.S.- and Mexico-educated groups. (PsycINFO Database Record

Investigating Factorial Invariance of Latent Variables Across Populations When Manifest Variables Are Missing Completely.

Difficulties arise in multiple-group evaluations of factorial invariance if particular manifest variables are missing completely in certain groups. Ad hoc analytic alternatives can be used in such situations (e.g., deleting manifest variables), but some common approaches, such as multiple imputation, are not viable. At least 3 solutions to this problem are viable: analyzing differing sets of variables across groups, using pattern mixture approaches, and a new method using random number generation. The latter solution, proposed in this article, is to generate pseudo-random normal deviates for all observations for manifest variables that are missing completely in a given sample and then to specify multiple-group models in a way that respects the random nature of these values. An empirical example is presented in detail comparing the 3 approaches. The proposed solution can enable quantitative comparisons at the latent variable level between groups using programs that require the same number of manifest variables in each group.

Demographic predictors of cognitive change in ethnically diverse older persons.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate how demographic variables relate to cognitive change and address whether cross-sectional demographic effects on cognitive tests are mirrored in differences in longitudinal trajectories of cognitive decline. We hypothesized that race and ethnicity, education, and language of test administration would relate to cross-sectional status and that the rate of cognitive decline would differ among African Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians, across levels of educational attainment, and according to linguistic background. Participants were 404 educationally, ethnically, and cognitively diverse older adults enrolled in an ongoing longitudinal study of cognition. Mixed-effects regression analysis was used to measure baseline status and longitudinal change in episodic memory, executive functioning, and semantic memory. Results showed that ethnicity and education were strongly associated with baseline scores, but were, at most, weakly associated with change in cognition over time after accounting for confounding variables. There was evidence that the episodic-memory scores of Spanish-speaking Hispanic participants with limited education underestimated their true abilities in the initial evaluation, which may reflect lack of familiarity with the testing environment. These results--consistent with other reports in the literature--suggest that cross-sectional effects of demographic variables on cognitive-test scores result from differences in life experiences that directly influence test performance and do not indicate greater disease effects on cognition in minorities and those with limited education.

Dispositional optimism: a psychological resource for Mexican-origin mothers experiencing economic stress.

Dispositional optimism is believed to be an important psychological resource that buffers families against the deleterious consequences of economic adversity. Using data from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin families (N = 674), we tested a family stress model specifying that maternal dispositional optimism and economic pressure affect maternal internalizing symptoms, which, in turn, affects parenting behaviors and children's social adjustment. As predicted, maternal optimism and economic pressure had both independent and interactive effects on maternal internalizing symptoms, and the effects of these variables on changes over time in child social adjustment were mediated by nurturant and involved parenting. The findings replicate and extend previous research on single-parent African American families (Taylor, Larsen-Rife, Conger, Widaman, & Cutrona, 2010), and demonstrate the generalizability of the positive benefits of dispositional optimism in another ethnic group and type of family structure.