Health and Aging Research in Nepal

Organizers: Amy Pienta, William Axinn, Jennifer Barber

Declining fertility and improving public health conditions suggest that population aging has begun and will continue to increase in poorer countries around the world. Recently, many of the world's poorest regions have undergone tremendous social change. In these parts of the world, the family has played a critical role in moderating and distributing the influence of these changes across individuals (Pienta, Barber, Axinn, and Shrestha 2002). Furthermore, with falling infant mortality and increased adult survival, chronic and degenerative diseases have begun to replace infectious diseases and malnutrition as important causes of death associated with aging in even the poorest areas. These changes will affect the well-being and care of today's older adults in South Asia, who far outnumber the elderly living in the United States. Nepal - a small landlocked, mountainous country nestled between India and China - is an ideal setting for the study of social change and aging. Nepal is in the midst of dramatic social change, creating an older population that has been exposed to major changes in the span of a single lifetime.

The Nepal network has a broad goal of building a network of scholars who are working to advance scholarship on health, well-being and aging in Nepal and South Asia more generally. As part of this effort, the network has been (1) exploring the feasibility of fielding a health & well-being survey among older adults living in Nepal and (2) building relationships with various HIV/AIDS organizations in Nepal to design a research questions to better understand the impact of HIV/AIDS on older Nepalese. The goal is to develop data collection tools that are appropriate for the local context of Nepal and yet are comparable with ongoing aging surveys in other countries around the world

The network organizers have conducted research and training in Chitwan, Nepal for more than 10 years through the Population and Ecology Research Laboratory (PERL).