Crews D E
Department of Anthropology, Ohio State University, Columbus 43210-1364, USA.
Coll Antropol. 1997 Jun;21(1):83-92.
During the latter half of the twentieth century many societies experienced rapid increases in the number of persons aged 65 years and older. Such increases followed world wide reductions in infant and childhood mortality and the widespread control of infectious diseases through sanitation and medical advances. Today, we observe increasingly older average ages in many industrialized cosmopolitan societies, some approaching 35 years. With this increase, the need to understand the problems of elders and research on age-related patterns of health change also have increased. This paper explores some of the advantages that a transdisciplinary approach might have to studies of aging and gerontology. Particular emphasis is placed on the chronic degenerative diseases, activities of daily living, and longitudinal patterns of individual change.
在二十世纪后半叶，许多社会中65岁及以上老年人的数量迅速增加。这种增长是在全球婴儿和儿童死亡率下降以及通过卫生设施和医学进步对传染病进行广泛控制之后出现的。如今，我们观察到许多工业化大都市社会的平均年龄越来越大，有些已接近35岁。随着这种增长，了解老年人问题以及研究与年龄相关的健康变化模式的需求也在增加。本文探讨了跨学科方法在衰老和老年学研究中可能具有的一些优势。特别强调慢性退行性疾病、日常生活活动以及个体变化的纵向模式。
