The Association of Vision and Hearing Impairment on Cognitive Function and Loneliness: Evidence From the Mexican Health and Aging Study.
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2025-06
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Objectives: We investigated whether self-reported vision and hearing were associated with cognitive function and loneliness among Mexican adults aged 50 and older. Methods: Mexican Health and Aging Study data. Vision/hearing status was self-reported (excellent-very good, good, fair-poor). Cognition was measured using nine tasks. Loneliness was measured using the UCLA Loneliness Scale. Analyses controlled for demographic and health characteristics. Results: Among 12,353 participants (mean age = 67, 58% female), poor vision, but not hearing, was associated with lower global cognition (β = -0.03, p < .05). Poor vision (OR = 1.57, 95% CI = 1.30-1.91) and hearing (OR = 1.35, 95% CI = 1.14-1.61) were associated with higher odds of being lonely after adjusting for demographics and comorbidities, but not when adjusting for limitations in daily activities and depressive symptoms. Discussion: Poor vision is a potentially modifiable risk factor for lower cognition and loneliness among Mexican adults. These associations are partly due to functional characteristics of older adults with poor vision.
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Hreha, Kimberly, Rafael Samper-Ternent, Heather E Whitson, LP Downer, Jessica S West and Brian Downer (2025). The Association of Vision and Hearing Impairment on Cognitive Function and Loneliness: Evidence From the Mexican Health and Aging Study. Journal of aging and health, 37(5-6). pp. 337–346. 10.1177/08982643241247583 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/34277.
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Kimberly Hreha
Heather Elizabeth Whitson
Dr. Whitson is a geriatrician, memory care specialist, and clinical researcher. Her career is focused on improving care options and resilience for people with multiple chronic conditions. In particular, she has interest and expertise related to how aging biology and comorbidities impact brain health and risk for Alzheimer's disease. She is co-director of the Duke/UNC Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (Duke/UNC ADRC), which aims to transform dementia care and research in Eastern North Carolina while developing novel preventions and treatment strategies for Alzheimer's disease by identifying aging-related factors across the lifespan that drive risk, progression, or experience of dementia. The Duke/UNC ADRC conducts the Memory and Aging Study, which is tracking brain and cognitive changes in over 400 individuals at risk for dementia in later life. Dr. Whitson also co-Chairs the Alzheimer's Association's Clinical Practice Guideline panel for the use of blood-based biomarkers in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. As a thought leader in a national collaborative focused on the biomedical aspects of resilience, Dr. Whitson seeks to better understand biological, psychological, and contextual factors that determine how well we "bounce back" after acute health stressors and why our resilience capacity changes with age. Dr. Whitson has contributed to work examining resilience to many types of health stressors, including surgery, dialysis, infection, vascular events, and vision loss - often focused on how these stressors affect the brain. She has led multiple studies to examine how the aging brain responds to the late-life stressor of vision loss, and she has developed a rehabilitation model to improve independence in older adults living with comorbid impairments in vision and cognition.
Jessica Sayles West
Jessica is a medical sociologist whose research examines hearing loss stigma, aging, and health disparities across the life course. Her work integrates sociological theory, population health sciences, and hearing healthcare to understand how hearing loss and hearing-related stigma shape mental health, social relationships, healthcare experiences, and quality of life among diverse populations. Jessica has documented the broader consequences of hearing loss for individuals and families, identified sociodemographic disparities in hearing health, and helped advance the measurement of hearing loss stigma. Supported by a National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) K01 Career Development Award, her current research program focuses on documenting, measuring, and reducing stigma associated with hearing loss to improve health outcomes and advance hearing health equity. Her research has been published in leading journals including, the Journals of Gerontology, Social Science & Medicine, Ear and Hearing, and other prominent outlets in medical sociology, population health, audiology, and aging research.
Jessica received a B.A. from the University of Michigan in Social Anthropology (dual Sociology/Anthropology concentration) followed by an M.P.H. in Sociomedical Sciences with a certificate in Public Health Research Methods from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. She subsequently received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology with a focus in Medical Sociology and Demography at Duke University. She then completed an NIA T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Duke University Aging Center. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine, a Faculty Research Scholar in the Duke University Population Research Institute, and a Senior Fellow in the Duke University Aging Center.
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