ABSTRACT
Mexican Americans comprise the majority of the Hispanic elderly population—approximately 54 percent. Cubans comprise 13.6 percent; mainland Puerto Ricans, 8.9 percent; Central and South Americans, 6.5 percent; and "other" Hispanics, primarily New Mexicans who identify themselves as "Hispanic" or "Spanish," 16.6 percent. A large proportion of the Mexican–American elderly come from older families who have lived in the Southwest since the nineteenth century or earlier while elderly Cubans are usually immigrants who came to the United States as political refugees. The most often mentioned are institutional policies and procedures that discourage their utilization by the Hispanic elderly, lack of bilingual and bicultural health care personnel at all levels of the health care system, location of the health care facility and inadequate outreach in the language of their preference. The Hispanic elderly constitute a large and ethnically diverse subgroup of the Hispanic population of the United States that has been largely ignored in the development of health programs and policies.
