New book edited by CAA Organizers:
Please click here to find more information about findings from the 2013 ICAA in Challenges of Latino Aging in the Americas edited by William A. Vega, Kyriakos S. Markides, Jacqueline L. Angel, and Fernando M. Torres-Gil.
About the CAA:
The Conference Series on Aging in the Americas (CAA) is aimed at utilizing research to augment knowledge about dimensions of healthful aging for people of Hispanic and Latin American descent and fostering emerging scholars in the field as this topic rapidly develops as a major policy and national budget issue.
Each CAA installment or ICAA has several goals, one is to promote interdisciplinary collaboration by gathering a broad array of researchers in the fields of Hispanic health, health care policy, and behavioral and social aspects of aging into a single forum to exchange ideas and foster collaborative efforts aimed at addressing key issues affecting the health of aged Hispanics. The conference research agenda is unique in its focus on the aging population in the United States and Mexico and has important implications for the health and well-being of older Hispanic adults and their families.
CAA began in 2001 and the 2014 meeting is the seventh installment in the conference series. Past conferences examined the social and economic causes and consequences of health problems among older Mexican-origin individuals in the United States and in Mexico. CAA’s investigators and advisory team lead the conference each year with the generous support of grantees, sponsors, and partners. The CAA Mentoring Program offers a unique opportunity for emerging scholars to participate in a juried poster session and engage with expert researchers on issues related to their field of study.
Over the last fifteen years the Conference Series on Aging in the Americas (CAA) has brought together leading senior scholars and emerging scholars to develop a critical mass of theoretical and practical work aimed at greatly expanding our knowledge base concerning the consequences of population aging in the Americas. The first meeting was held at The University of Texas at Austin in 2001, and was followed by six additional conferences in 2005, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Each meeting is convened during National Hispanic Heritage Month and Mexico’s Independence Day. The overarching goal of the conference series is to address vitally important issues that affect not only the Hispanic population of the United States, but those of all Latin American nations in which the demographic transition that took a century or more in Europe is occurring in a few decades. The rapid demographic transition in Mexico has immediate practical implications for both that country and the United States. New policies dealing with education, health care, housing, transportation, and more will be necessary to deal with changing population age compositions.
The ICAA series has three major aims: 1) to facilitate the exchange of ideas aimed at addressing key issues confronting the aging populations in the Americas; 2) to promote an interdisciplinary collaboration by researchers in the fields of Hispanic health, health care policy, and behavioral and social aspects of aging; the CAA installments are unique in their focus on the aging populations of the United States and Mexico; and 3) to set a research agenda for understanding and improving the health and well-being of older Latino adults and their families. One of the many attractive aspects of this conference series is that it supports interdisciplinary collaboration on state-of-the art research on Hispanic health and aging developed from the sharing, analysis, and dissemination of ideas. The series has a logical sequential order aimed at building upon previous work of each presenter through integration of knowledge, interest, and research findings on substantive and methodological issues.
Each installment in the series has a unique and individual signature theme, but follows a similar format. In the last three installments, topics covered the methodological problems of conducting cross-national comparative studies in context: Mexico and U.S.; implications of changing demographics in Mexico for Mexican-origin health and economic well-being; and research designed to improve understanding of the influences of the immigrant family experience on Hispanic (Mexican-origin) healthful aging. Each meeting lasts for two days and consist of 2 keynotes, 10 presentations, and a poster session. In addition, there is a consensus building session at the end of each conference where participants review key issues raised during the conference and identify new directions for research.
About the Logo:
Since times before memory, la mariposa monarca (or monarch butterfly) journeys through the Americas to sustain its life. In cool, clear skies of October, indigenous people reverently welcome returning souls on wings aloft, reuniting in central Mexican forests and valleys. So the cycle continues from beginnings unknown to no ends…
The Aging in the Americas Conference selected la monarca to symbolize the threads that unite us across the Americas in understanding and reverently preserving the dignity and integrity of life?s cycle that knows no beginnings or ends. Roberto Salas was commissioned by the Conference to create la monarca. La monarca was drawn from pre-Columbian images and images from industrialized and post-industrialized Americas. He is a Chicano artist who received his Masters in Fine Art from the University of New Mexico. Roberto Salas is Director of the art galleries El Taller Cruzando Traques, which is located in San Diego, California and Studio Maguey, in El Paso, Texas.