Abstract
Abstract
The need to study lifelong changes in health and functioning has resulted in increasing emphasis on a life course approach in different fields of inquiry. The aim of this approach is to explore how biological, psychological, and social risk factor trajectories, acting across the entire life course, influence age-related diseases, functional decline, and disability. The importance of the first years of life upon later development and adult characteristics was generally recognized already in the first half of the twentieth century, but it was not until the 1990s that different strands of medical and social research converge in the field of life course epidemiology, in which epidemiological processes are approached using different models such as biological programming, critical periods, pathways, and accumulation. The biological programming model holds that organ development in utero and early infancy determines the maximum functional capacity that an individual can attain and influences the development of certain chronic diseases later in life. The critical period model extends the idea to include child development and key social transitions over the entire life course. The pathway model focuses on the cumulative effect of life events along the developmental trajectories, with early advantage or disadvantage setting a person on a pathway to a later etiologically important exposure. The accumulation model describes the underlying social, behavioral, and biological processes that drive the impact of the life course on health. The growing focus on life course determinants of aging also has implications for studies of long-term changes in physical activity and their role in determining both gains and losses of health and functioning with aging. A life course approach presents great challenges for the continued development of testable theoretical models and effective study design and analysis.
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
Geriatrics and Gerontology
Reference38 articles.
1. Kuh D, New Dynamics of Ageing [NDA] Preparatory Network (2007) A life course approach to healthy ageing, frailty and capability. J Geront Med Sci 62A:717–721
2. Franco OH, Karnik K, Osborne G, Ordovas JM, Catt M, van der Ouderaa F (2009) Changing course in ageing research: the healthy aging phenotype. Maturitas 63:13–19
3. Ben-Shlomo Y, Kuh D (2002) A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology: conceptual models, empirical challenges and interdisciplinary perspectives. Int J Epidemiol 33:285–293
4. Darnton-Hill I, Nishida C, James WPT (2004) A life course approach to diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases. Public Health Nutr 7:101–121
5. Clarke AM, Clarke ABD (1976) The formative years? In: Clarke AM, Clarke ABD (eds) Early experience: myth and evidence. The Free Press, New York
Cited by
25 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献