Volume 38 - Article 9 | Pages 227–232  

Preface to the Special Collection on Interdisciplinary Research on Healthy Aging

By Yi Zeng

This article is part of the Special Collection 22 "Interdisciplinary Research on Healthy Aging"

Abstract

Contribution: This preface first outlines the background and origin of the Special Collection, which is the outcome of an international conference on interdisciplinary research on healthy aging. I then briefly discuss the major demographic trends of population aging worldwide, using the cases of the United States and China as two typical examples of developed and developing countries. The main contents of the preface are discussions on why interdisciplinary research on healthy aging is crucially important for academics and public health programs. Condensed summaries of a few recently published biodemographic analyses on the effects of gene environment’s interactions on health and mortality (social factors, behavioral facotrs, and diet habits, etc.) among older adults are presented as illustrations. Finally, the preface notes that interdisciplinary research that integrates biomedical-genetic and social-behavioral data analyses is already rather popular in biostatistics, epidemiology, and public health studies; however, it has received less attention in demography so far. Thus, promoting interdisciplinary and biodemographic analyses on healthy aging is one of the priorities and challenges to which we should dedicate ourselves.

Author's Affiliation

• Yi Zeng - Duke University, United States of America EMAIL

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