The economic, social, and life-course antecedents of later-life multimorbidity in low- and middle-income countries: evidence from China
Mengling Cheng, University of Lausanne
Multimorbidity is a worldwide public health issue, affecting a large number of older people and posing a challenge to health systems. Nevertheless, existing studies focus mainly on general populations in high-income countries and evidence on multimorbidity of more vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains limited.
To advance the understanding of the determinants of health in LMICs, this research takes a multilevel prospective approach to study China—which has world’s largest ageing population—to test whether and how the economic, social, and life-course antecedents influence later-life multimorbidity.
The objectives of my research are threefold:
firstly, to unveil the profile of later-life multimorbidity in both urban and rural China,
secondly, to assess the antecedents of later-life multimorbidity in China;
finally, to explore cultural differences in determinants of later-life multimorbidity in China and Switzerland, and generalize results to other LMICs.
Keywords: multimorbidity, antecedents, elderly health, LMICs
Short Biography
Mengling holds a Master’s Degree from Peking University Department of Sociology in 2016. Prior to her PhD studies at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Mengling is funded as a German Chancellor Fellow by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to carry out a research on long-term care insurance at the German Centre of Gerontology from 2018 to 2019. Currently, Mengling is also a SNSF PhD student at the NCCR LIVES of UNIL.
Mengling’s research interests include: elderly health, social determinants of health, long-term care for older people, and etc.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 801076
