Risk for Disability and Poverty Among Central Asians in the United States.

Understanding the disability-poverty relationship among minority groups within the United States (US) populations may help inform interventions aimed at reducing health disparities. Limited information exists on risk factors for disability and poverty among "Central Asians" (immigrants born in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and other Central Asian regions of the former Soviet Union) in the US. The current cross-sectional analysis used information on 6,820 Central Asians to identify risk factors for disability and poverty. Data from the 2009-2013 Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) file from the American Community Survey (ACS) indicate that being married, non-Latino-white, and having higher levels of educational attainment are protective against disability and poverty. In contrast, older age, residing in the Middle Atlantic geographic division, and having limited English language ability are risk factors for both disability and poverty. Research should continue to develop risk profiles for understudied immigrant populations. Expanding knowledge on the well-being of Central Asians in the US may help impact public health interventions and inform health policies.

The Regional Geoboundarization of the Mexican Population in the United States through Saenzian Logic.

The population proliferation of Latinos in the U.S. has propelled them into the new majority-minority. Mexicans make up more than half of all Latinos/as. Social scientists have long known that accounting for social environment is crucial in deciphering how social structures interact with individual human behavior. Academic discourse needs to explicitly delineate the logic and best practices for measuring social contexts. Standardizing how contexts are geographically boundarized and subsequently measured could provide multilevel and spatial modeling researchers a more solid theoretical foundation for nesting individuals and measuring their environment. Context measuring standardization would make cross study comparisons more readily available. This project seeks to contribute to this endeavor by employing and advancing the "Saenzian" logic for regionalizing Mexican origin Latinos/as. The proposed solution applies to social research that uses U.S. Census Bureau microdata to investigate the Mexican population. By using Saenzian concepts, this study explores and proposes three alternatives for geographically regionalizing the Mexican population. Maps are utilized to present the logic for the classical, new, and clustered Saenzian regional classification schemes. Findings comparing the classical and new approach reveal that smaller geographical units reveal important insights that are typically hidden by large polygon conglomerations. Findings from the clustered analysis reveal that regions are more tightly and well defined. A discussion is offered in closing posing basic theoretical questions on what constitutes a region.

Physical performance and short-term mortality in very old Mexican Americans.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: Physical performance measures have been found to be strong predictors of adverse outcomes in aging populations. Few studies have examined the predictive ability of physical performance measures exclusively within populations of the very old. This study explores the predictive ability of the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) and its three subcomponents-a timed walk, balance test, and repeated timed chair stands-on mortality in a sample of Mexican Americans aged 75 and older. METHODS: Logistic regression analyses were used with data from the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly (Hispanic EPESE), to investigate the relationship between timed walk, balance test, repeated timed chair stands, and the SPPB and mortality over a 2½-year period. RESULTS: The authors find that being unable to complete the timed walk, the balance test, and repeated timed chair stands, or unable to complete any of the SPPB was significantly associated with mortality over 2½ years. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that physical performance measures may be less predictive of short-term mortality in very old Mexican Americans than previously thought. More research is needed to understand this relationship.

Reliability of self-report on basic health conditions in Mexican Americans Age 80 and older.

Reliability of self-reports in survey research is important. Little is known about the reliability of self-reports in the very old (aged 80+). The objective of this study is to evaluate the level of reliability in self-reports by assessing the level of agreement between a "respondents" and their "informants" (children) as they rate the respondent's: hearing ability; vision capacity; and nine health conditions. Descriptive statistics, observed agreement, and kappa values are computed on 389 pairs using HEPESE Wave-7 data (2010-2011). Although further studies are required, there is evidence that self-reports on basic health conditions in the very old are reliable.

Alternative scoring for Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE).

BACKGROUND: Studies assessing physical functioning with the Physical Activity Scale for the Elderly (PASE) should be aware that the instrument may be age and culture insensitive. OBJECTIVES: To asses "classical" PASE scoring in a sample of aged (mean age 74) Mexican origin Latinos in the Southwestern United States and provide a new scoring algorithm. METHOD: Information from a cross sectional study of 2438 community-dwelling minority subjects who completed the PASE scale was scored with the classical and a new scoring approach to compare their similarity and predictive power on three items of functional ability. RESULTS: The classical and new scoring procedures for PASE items render different total scores. CONCLUSION: The classical approach for scoring PASE in aged minorities may fail to capture the age and culture insensitivity of the instrument. The new approach, or a derivation of it, should be used to compute the total PASE score for minority aged populations as further research continues.

Language Shift in the United States and Foreign-Born Older Mexican Heritage Individuals: Co-ethnic Context for Language Resistance.

In this study, we investigate individual-level language shift in a population of Mexican origin Latinos/as aged 65 and up. By using data from the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly, we investigate their English language use as the dependent variable in a hierarchical linear model. The microlevel independent continuous variable is their level of contact with "Anglos"; the macrolevel continuous independent variable is the percentage of Mexicans in tract of residence. After accounting for their generational status, other microlevel social and health covariates, and tract-level attributes, we found a direct relationship between contact with Anglos and a "shift" toward more English language use, where as co-ethnic concentration increases, the influence of contact with Anglos decreases. We frame this article with a discussion on language shifting, and explain how co-ethnic concentration may provide the resources for engaging in a language resistance.