Dr. Nekehia Quashie, an assistant professor in Public Health, along with Dr. Flavia Andrade and doctoral student Ting Hu from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, were recently awarded a grant from the World Health Organization (WHO). This grant will fund research focusing on unmet care needs of older adults in the Americas. The project, Quantifying unmet need for social care among older persons globally with special attention to the WHO Region of the Americas, will analyze unmet social care needs among older adults (aged 60+) globally, focusing on the Americas region. Using publicly available data, the team’s research will provide insights of unmet care needs and quantify them in a way that can drive both regional and global strategies of long-term care.
Unmet care needs contribute to poor health, reduced quality of life, institutionalization, and mortality. In 2020, approximately 16% of the North American population was aged 60+ and is expected to continue rising. Latin America and the Caribbean are expected to reach similar thresholds by 2040. Those aged 80+ are the fastest-growing group, with high vulnerability and increased care demands. These statistics highlight the need for comprehensive research identifying, assessing, and analyzing data to estimate unmet social care needs of older persons in order to produce policy implications specific to the Americas region.
On April 22, 2025, URI’s College of Health Sciences hosted their Student Research Night. Kelly Ahern, a then-senior Public Health Major, presented her ongoing research on “Identifying Unmet Social Care Needs of Older Adults in Latin America and the Caribbean” which was done in collaboration with Dr. Quashie’s WHO grant-funded research. The project examined cross-national variation in the prevalence of older adults’ 1) needs for care based on difficulties with activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), and 2) met or unmet social care needs based on their receipt of assistance or lack thereof, within the global region of the Americas with a particular focus on Latin America and the Caribbean.
A final report on Dr. Quashie and Dr. Andrade’s research is expected to be submitted by December 2025.