Renowned Authority on Minorities, Aging and Health to Speak April 20 at UMaine
Contact: Kyriacos Markides, 581-2390
George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — One of the world’s leading authorities in the field of minorities, aging and health will be on the Orono campus of the University of Maine for a special guest lecture on April 20.
Kyriakos S. Markides, Ph.D., author, researcher and professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of Texas, Galveston — and cousin to University of Maine sociology professor Kyriacos C. Markides — will deliver a talk, “Minorities, Aging, and Health: An Overview of the Field,” from 3:15-4:45 p.m. in the Bangor Lounge of the Memorial Union. The talk is free, open to the public, and sponsored by the UMaine Department of Sociology.
Markides is the Annie & John Gnitzinger Distinguished Professor of Aging Studies, and director of the Division of Sociomedical Sciences, Department of Preventative Medicine and Community Health at the University of Texas. The author or coauthor of several books and more than 250 journal articles on aging and health issues in the Mexican American population, as well as minority issues in general, Markides serves on the boards of five professional journals, including Research on Aging and Gerontologist. He also is editor of the Journal of Aging and Health, which he founded in 1989.
Markides also is currently the principal investigator of the Hispanic EPESE (Established Population for the Epidemiological Study of the Elderly), a longitudinal study of the health of more than 3,000 Mexican American elderly from the five Southwestern states.
He is credited with coining the term “Hispanic Epidemiological Paradox” with J. Coreil, which is the leading theme in Hispanic Health. Markides also is in the process of editing the Encyclopedia of Health and Aging, to be published by SAGE Publications this month.
The Institute for Scientific Information recently listed Markides among the most highly cited scientists in the world. He is the 2006 recipient of the Distinguished Mentorship Award of the Gerontological Society of America, Behavioral and Social Sciences section.