Despite the rapid growth of Chinese populations, we have the most rudimentary understanding of many health disparities issues facing the US Chinese older adults. Prior local level needs assessment in Chinese communities indicate there are marked gaps in our scientific knowledge on the issues of intergenerational relationships, cultural expectations of aging, depression, suicide, social isolation, and elder mistreatment (elder abuse, neglect, financial exploitation and self-neglect). These marked health disparities are further exacerbated by the linguistic and cultural complexities when dealing with these issues as well as the inadequate community support necessary to empower the Chinese community to be fully engaged as equal partners in research. These impediments necessitate a deeper understanding broader contextual factors associated with these conditions, through the development of sustainable community-academic partnership and the reciprocal transfer of expertise to improve the health of the Chinese population. Accordingly, we will leverage a comprehensive model of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to examine the cross sectional associations between intergenerational relationships and health and wellbeing of Chinese older adults. More specifically, we aim to examine the cross sectional association between quality and expectations of the filial relationships with the perception of stress and social isolation;to examine the intergenerational discordance, conflict, and mistreatment with respect to their health and wellbeing;and to examine the associations among intergenerational solidarity, frailty and stress and social isolation. Improved understanding of these associations could improve our understanding of key contextual factors that may contribute to future prevention and intervention strategies to improve health and wellbeing of Chinese older adults. To achieve these objectives, a bilingual and bicultural principal investigator and an experienced interdisciplinary team will build on our NIH funded CBPR projects to collaborate with Chicago Chinese community groups. The findings from this proposal could inform the successful conduct of future research to improve health and wellbeing among US Chinese older adults.
This application aims to conduct a descriptive study to examine the cross sectional associations among intergenerational relationship, discordance, conflicts and stress and social isolation of Chinese older adults in a community-dwelling population. The findings from this study will provide important information on the risk and protective factors associated with health and wellbeing of older Chinese persons. This is consistent with NIH's goal of improve health and aging and reduce health disparities in all racial/ethnic groups.
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