Aging-Related Health and Aging Acceleration in Older Women with Criminal Legal System Involvement (AGELIS)

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY There are over 177,000 women detained in U.S. jails and prisons on any day and another 800,000 serving sentences in the community under custodial supervision. About 20% of women with criminal legal system involvement (CLSI) are age 50 or older. Rates of women and older adults have both risen dramatically in recent decades, 700% and 280%, respectively. For many women, incarceration and probation are profoundly stressful experiences, often overlapping with other life circumstances—trauma and abuse, homelessness, substance use, mental illness—that disrupt women's support systems and health services access. Many women who experience CLSI also do so repeatedly, cycling in and out of incarceration and probation over many years. The toll on health can be profound. CLSI is associated with disproportionately high rates of many chronic and infectious diseases and early mortality in women of all ages and is hypothesized to lead to acceleration of aging-related conditions. Most of what we know about the health of older women (age 50 and older) with CLSI is extrapolated from the groups of older men and younger women. We lack an understanding of how CLSI functions as a social determinant for aging-related health in the group, including how much, when, and in conjunction with what other factors over the life course experiences of incarceration and probation contribute. We also know almost nothing about the health in aging attitudes, goals, self-efficacy, and experiences of community-dwelling older women with CLSI. The objective of the Aging-Related Health and Aging Acceleration in Older Women with Criminal Legal System Involvement Study (AGELIS) is to fill critical gaps in our knowledge about how CLSI functions as a life course social determinant and what women with CLSI mean by and want from health in aging. Closing such gaps is crucial in moving the field toward intervention readiness and ultimately improved health outcomes. The specific aims of AGELIS are to (a) establish relationships between the health in aging construct, functional ability, life course factors, and CLSI in older women with CLSI, compared with a matched comparison group in the Health and Retirement Study and (b) characterize attitudes, goals, self-efficacy and experiences of health in aging in older women with CLSI using semi-structured interviews and ethnographic case study. In partnership with a community research team, we will bring results from the two aims together in an integrated model of health in aging with CLSI. AGELIS will provide an empirical and experiential basis for subsequent intervention design and point the way forward for investigation in aging with other groups that experience significant life course stress.