Raíces De Salud: How Sociocultural, Cohort, and Contextual Factors Influence Health Among Older Latinos in the United States

Objectives: Diabetes and hypertension are major chronic conditions that affect a growing number of aging Latinos in the U.S. and is among one of the leading causes of death and disability. These chronic conditions are understood mainly as a product of proximate individual-level health behaviors without recognizing how social factors, social disadvantages, and social inequalities intersect to influence the disease process among Latinos. This dissertation examined how various social determinants of health, such as social, temporal, and neighborhood characteristics, were associated with diabetes and hypertension among the older Latino population.
Methods: A nationally representative sample of older Latino adults from the Health and Retirement Study were used to 1) examine how race/ethnicity, nativity status, and national/cultural origin intersect and get “under the skin” to influence physiological functioning (e.g., cardiovascular, metabolic, inflammation); 2) document compositional profiles of the Latino population by birth cohort, and examine trends in diabetes and hypertension; and 3) examine the types of neighborhoods Latinos live in and how these neighborhoods were associated with the prevalence of diabetes.

Results: Results show that there is a complex interplay of social, temporal, and neighborhood factors that intersect and produce cumulative impacts across the life course that influence the prevalence of diabetes and hypertension among older Latinos.

Discussion: Understanding Latinos’ varied experiences can play a critical role in advancing health equity by expanding our understanding of health disparities beyond proximate individual-level health behaviors.