ArticleThe journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences2025
Mapping the Trajectories of Social Relations for White, Black, and Hispanic/Latino Individuals Approaching Death With Dementia.
Article in The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trajectories of Social Activity Engagement and Physical and Cognitive Function During the Last Years of Life.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2026Article
- Social network structure and composition predicting cognitive impairment: racial/ethnic differences among older adults.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesLarger social networks are associated with a lower risk of dementia, but little is known about how social networks shift as someone with dementia approaches death. We investigate these shifts while giving special attention to race and ethnicity, which are related to different dementia patterns, social network sizes, and social network makeup.
methodsThis study included 2,301 deceased people with dementia from the Health and Retirement Study (2004-2018; waves = 8). Multilevel models estimated associations between dementia, race/ethnicity, time, and close family and friend network size while controlling for several variables, including instrumental activities of daily living, age, proxy status, and disease count, using retrospective and proxy data.
resultsSocial networks shrank linearly as death approached. A decrease in close friends primarily drove shrinkage. However, when race/ethnicity was crossed with time, Hispanic/Latino persons with dementia showed the opposite pattern. As Hispanic/Latino persons with dementia approached death, the number of close extended family members increased dramatically: one additional person every 4 years. DISCUSSION: Dementia risk, social networks, and patterns of social network shrinking are unequal across people of different races and ethnicities. Adding nuance to known patterns, network shrinkage may be a phenomenon of White persons with dementia. In contrast, patterns of stable or even increasing numbers of network members may better describe Black and Hispanic/Latino networks, respectively. These findings may reveal unique strengths of Black and Hispanic/Latino networks that could be leveraged to develop care and support for individuals with dementia and those they leave behind.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.