Evening brackets

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected”. Robert Frost’s line sums up what the “Philippine and Global Perspectives on Aging” forum addresses.  At University of San Carlos in Cebu, the Office of Population Studies will bring together, scholars on aging on Wednesday.

A 2010 survey estimated 6.8 percent of Filipinos are over age 60.  That’s a   sliver below the UN’s 7 percent cut-off point, notes OPS’ Judith Borja.

Given health and social programs gains, more Filipino cluster in what President Bill Clinton dubbed as the “almost-old” brackets. Filipino elderly “constitute the fastest growing population sector”.  Fertility decline here lags behind next-door countries.  

“This steep aging trajectory” contrasts with gradual aging experience in industrialized nations. It “gives less time and resources” to cope with crammed old folk homes.

“Ongoing nutrition and epidemiologic transitions” compound the problem. Many shift to diets, heavy on fat, as fast food outlets offer. People ride short distances and few exercise. These jack up “obesity and cardio-metabolic diseases.” 

“No one can avoid aging,” publisher Katherine Graham wrote. “But aging productively is something else”.  Are today’s elderly programmed for increased cardio-metabolic disease risk at younger ages”?  This ushers “an unhealthy entry into old age”.

Many of the elderly are economically insecure. Some work even when aging muscles scream stop. “You grow old when you stop to laugh,” George Bernard Shaw wrote. .There is a “narrow window” to address structural and policy changes to meet needs of the wheelchair brigade.

The conference will pinpoint new research areas, as seen in the context of findings in other countries. These could underpin tomorrow’s aging policy. Keep your fingers crossed. Scientists from universities in the North Carolina, Maryland, Minnesota ,California are resource speakers.

OPS will present a “longitudinal analysis” of elderly, based on 3,080 mothers and their children from 243 Cebu barangays tracked since 1983.  Yesterday’s Cebu infants are today’s grandparents. Some still   hold down jobs. There’ve been school dropouts. A number have died and 136 moved out. At last follow-up, one was an OFW worker in Iceland.

Sustained studies like Cebu’s Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS) are rare. Only Brazil, India, South Africa and Guatemala had similar ongoing birth cohort studies that cover close to 11,000 individuals. All had “at least 15 years or more of follow-up.” 

Over the last 31 years, OPS data anchored 125 international and national research projects. They range from pre-birth malnutrition’s effect on blood pressure and early onset of menstruation to parental and peer pressure on young adult sexual behavior.  San Carlos completed its examination of new pregnancies and birth outcomes among those who were once 1983 infants. This “makes CLHNS a three-generation study.”

“Cebu findings shaped the first World Bank health financing strategy,” University of North Carolina’s Barry Popkin wrote. Cebu research was “instrumental” in Unicef and Asian Development Bank’s programs on early child development. A Harvard University team used the CLHNS for analysis of two long-term vaccination programs.

The Regional Central American Institute, matched Cebu data with those of villages in Guatemala and Uruguay. World Bank used it for analysis of long-term consequences of childhood malnutrition in Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

Egypt applied Cebu methodology to gauge effects of water and sanitation on children. Russian demographers used data assess household expenditures and married women’s resource position.

Credit, Fr. Wilhelm Flieger, SVD, who organized OPS at University of San Carlos and the Nutrition Center’s Florentino Solon. In 1983, they crafted, then launched the Cebu longitudinal survey.

Aside from this work, Fr. Flieger pioneered studies on population movements in Philippine uplands, mortality research, systems for modular questionnaires. And he helped train many of today's Filipino demographers.

A massive stroke cut down Father Flieger in 1999. Cebu’s “elite” didn’t notice his passing. In contrast, Harvard University’s professor emeritus Nathan Keyfitz wrote: “He was the student and later the associate of whom I was proudest… Of all my students, he went far beyond his teacher.”

Despite his workload, this priest “found a parish that lacked a pastor. Twice a week, he got into his little Volkswagen and drove to a village near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport where he ministered to a congregation that saw (the) purposefulness of his work.”

“Cebu officials never grasped the significance or value of CLHNS,” we wrote then. They instead fiddled with vigilante-style summary executions, buying handguns for barangay chieftains, fudging yen loans, etc. Then Mayor Tomas Osmeña saw to it his bodyguard, garlanded by three murder charges, was honored with a Cebu City Charter Day award. Today, they still dabble in such trash. 

North Carolina University’s Barry Popkin’s writes: “Metro Cebu offered the environmental and socio-economic diversity and variation in infant feeding behavior variability needed for this breaking research.”

The June 11 presentation will focus various dimensions of aging in over 1800 women aged 43 to 75 who participated in the CLHNS. Indeed, “the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected”.