The proposed project seeks to understand how, and to what extent, an elder's built environment is mediated by the elder's social behaviors and effective support systems to affect behavioral health changes for elderly Hispanic residents in a low-socioeconomic (SES) Urban Neighborhood: East Little Havana, Florida. An elder's built environment is defined by a set of architectural features of the buildings on the elder's residential street. A residential street is defined by two block faces bounded either by two intersections or by one intersection and a street ending. There are 226 such residential streets in East Little Havana. The proposed study will test a model that predicts that the architectural features of an elder's built environment are sequentially mediated by the elder's social behaviors and effective social supports to influence the trajectory of change in their cognitive functioning and their affective symptoms over a 36-month period. The method involves evaluating and coding the buildings on each of East Little Havana's 226 residential streets to describe the residential streets that support social connectedness. A household survey (covering 3,900 properties) will be conducted to locate the elders 70 years or older on each residential street. Then, two or more elders are to be randomly selected from each residential street, recruited, and engaged to participate in the study, and assessed at baseline and again at 12, 24 and 36 months after baseline. Hierarchical Linear Modeling and Multilevel Latent Growth Curve Analysis will be used to examine the effects of the built environment and the mediating effects of individual social behaviors and effective social supports on the trajectory of change in cognitive functioning and change in affective symptoms in elders over a 36-month time period. Findings will be disseminated at three conferences focusing on the project in addition to submitting technical papers to be presented at professional meetings and to refereed journals.
