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The ethnographic fieldwork portion of the project - interviews with women of reproductive age, and when available their partners and mothers - was initiated and completed in 2006. For each of four Italian cities (Padua, Bologna, Cagliari, and Naples) studied ethnographically by trained anthropologists, both a working-class and a middle-class neighborhood were identified. These interviews (349 in number) have been transcribed without identifiers. All interviews have been coded and assigned 'attributes' (or nominative variables, such as gender, civil/religious status of marriage, etc.) using the qualitative data analysis software (NVIVO), and these reside in secure electronic project folders. This large body of qualitative interview data is now complete and ready for use across the international collaborative units. Preliminary research reveals the particular significance of family ties in Italy, the fundamental role played by gender systems, and the specific cultural, socio-economic, and politic contexts in which fertility behavior and parenting are embedded.

These are the third and fourth waves of the PREHCO project (Puerto Rican Elder Health Conditions study) and have been developed between 2021 and 2024 as a collaboration between the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Puerto Rico. The project began as a cross-sectional study of the non-institutionalized population aged 60 years or older in Puerto Rico. These waves followed the survivors of the original participants at the beginning of the fieldwork and aimed to examine the predictors of cognitive decline, disability, and mortality. The fourth wave of this study extends the follow-up of PREHCO to between 21 and 22 years after the initial data collection and aims to examine the predictors of cognitive decline, disability, and mortality.

PREHCO was designed as a study comparable to the Multicenter Project on Health and Well-being of Older Adults in Latin America and the Caribbean (SABE) developed by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in several cities in Latin America, and with some studies carried out in the United States, mainly the Health and Retirement Study (HRS).

For this purpose, a questionnaire was designed that included sections on health conditions, physical and mental disability, functionality, use of medicines, health needs and social services, access to and use of health services, abuse, migration, housing conditions, patterns of help from family, community and public and government agencies, and others.

Since its inception, PREHCO has been funded with federal funds from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Initially it was a project between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Puerto Rico from 2000-2009.

The TAZAMA Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) study site is located in the Kisesa and Bukandwe rural electoral wards in the Magu district of the Mwanza Region in Northern Tanzania. The two wards are comprised of six villages. There is one health center and five dispensaries (3 public and 2 private) in the study area. The two wards have eleven government primary schools (at least one in each village) and two secondary schools. Both Mwanza city and Magu town are accessible to residents; buses run along the main road and take about an hour and a half to get to Mwanza. Most of the residents are subsistence farmers; a lot of surplus agricultural produce is traded in Mwanza, which is Tanzania's second city. In the year 2012, the research study covered a population of about 30,000 people who live in the Kisesa and Bukandwe wards. The majority of the residents (about ninety five per cent) belong to the Sukuma ethnic group.

The DSS collects information on births and deaths and movements in and out of the households. It helps researchers to understand the population dynamics in the study area including fertility, mortality and migration patterns. It provides information on the structure of families that live together. The DSS study is also used to identify people who are eligible to participate in the serological surveys (the right age group, and continuously resident rather than just visiting). It provides the data for calculating the denominators for demographic rates.

The objectives of this study are as follows: (1) to improve understanding of the dynamics of the HIV epidemic; (2) to assess the demographic, social and economic impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; (3) to evaluate the effects of national prevention, treatment and care interventions as implemented in Kisesa Ward; (4) to measure child and adult mortality and fertility in the general population and by HIV status; (5) to asses the leading causes of death through verbal autopsy; (6) to assess changes in the family structure due to HIV epidemic; and (7) to provide reliable data for district health planning.