Brown, S., Szapocznik, J., Spokane, A., Fals, D., Gambirazio, F., Zarate, M., & Mason, C.A. (2004). Prevalence of cognitive impairment in a population-based study of urban Hispanic elders in Miami, Florida. The Gerontologist, Special Issue I, 515.

Previous research has shown that the rate or prevalence of cognitive impairment in a convenience sample of urban Hispanic elders in Chicago was much higher than the average reported for the United States (Crisostomo, Butler, Webster, & Moran, 2002). However, few studies have assessed the prevalence of cognitive impairment in a population-based study of urban Hispanic elderly adults.
The purpose of the present study was therefore to: 1) Examine the prevalence of cognitive impairment in a population-based study of Hispanic elders in East Little Havana, an urban-poor neighborhood of Miami, FL; 2) Assess whether the prevalence of cognitive impairment in our population-based sample was the same as in Crisostomo et al.’s (2002) convenience sample.

These results suggest that the rate of cognitive impairment in urban Hispanic elderly is high, albeit somewhat lower than in the study by Crisostomo et al. (2002). More resources may need to be directed toward the nature of the cognitive impairments in this rapidly-growing, underserved population of urban-poor Hispanic elders. Future analyses will assess the prevalence of cognitive impairment after calculating a statistical correction for the bias of education and age on MMSE scores (Mungas et al., 1996).