Esteban Calvo, a Chilean faculty member at the Mailman School of Public Health’s Social Epidemiology Unit just published a review and analysis of aging policy in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico. The article in the Journal of Aging and Social Policy describes how initial charity-based approaches to poverty and illness were gradually replaced by a rights-based approach considering broader notions of well-being, and that recent policy reforms emphasize the need for national, intersectoral, and evidence-based policy. The results of this review have implications for identifying priorities for intervention and informing policy reforms in developing countries worldwide.
The report was co-authored with Maureen Berho, Mónica Roqué, Juan Sebastián Amaro, Fernando Morales, Emiliana Rivera, Luis Miguel F. Gutiérrez Robledo, Elizabeth Caro López, Bernardita Canals, and Rosa Kornfeld.
Calvo, who is also Director and Professor at Chiles’s Universidad Mayor Society and Health Research Center, is a life-course sociologist and social epidemiologist interested in positive aging processes. Much of his work aims to identify and understand the social factors experienced across the life course that influence the health and happiness of older adults, as well as to evaluate public policies and interventions that can improve their well-being and benefit society as a whole. His current research agenda includes three threads: (1) assessing the impact of life-course statuses, transitions, and trajectories on a variety of health outcomes, from self-reports to physical measures and biomarkers; (2) understanding how individuals react to social contexts and public policies that they experience over the life course; and (3) improving our understanding of the challenges and opportunities posed by demographic change to aging-related policy throughout the world.
