Beverly P. Lyons - Sociocultural Differences between American-born and West Indian-born Elderly Blacks

GARLAND STUDIES ON
THE ELDERLY IN AMERICA

edited by
STUART BRUCHEY
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE

A Comparative Study of Health and Social Service Use

Beverly P. Lyons

First published 1997 by Garland Publishing, Inc.

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Copyright 1997 by Beverly P. Lyons

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lyons, Beverly P., 1950
Sociocultural differences between American-born and West Indian-born elderly Blacks: a comparative study of health and social service use / Beverly P. Lyons.
p. cm. (Garland studies on the elderly in America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3042-1 (alk. paper)
1. Social work with Afro-AmericansNew York (State) New York. 2. Social work with the agedNew York (State) New York. 3. Minority agedNew York (State)New York Social conditions. 4. West Indian AmericansNew York (State) New YorkSocial conditions. 5. Medical careUtilizationNew York (State)New York. 6. Social surveysNew York (State) New York. I. Title. II. Series.
HV3185.N47L95 1997
362.819607307471dc21
97-22284

ISBN 13: 978-0-8153-3042-4 (hbk)

Sociocultural differences between elderly American-born and West Indian-born Blacks: A comparative study of health and social service use, represents an important contribution to the available knowledge on Black elderly and the diversity found within the Black community. It is an outgrowth of a larger scale study of older people in New York City"Growing older in New York in the 1990s" (M.Cantor and B. Gurland, principal investigators). That study from which the data for the current publication was drawn, was commissioned by the New York Community Trust and a consortium of foundations and undertaken jointly by Fordham and Columbia Universities. The primary study, a follow up of my earlier research 011 New York's elderly ('The elderly in the inner city of New York, 1970") examined a representative sample of 1,557 older New Yorkers, including elderly Whites, Blacks and Latinos, living in the community. An important aspect of this research was the utilization of community based health and social services by the current elderly population in New York.

Beverly P. Lyons, in Sociocultural differences between elderly American-born and West Indian-born Blacks, has chosen to focus on a sub-sample of the original study population, the Black community dwelling elderly. Because New York City (often referred to as the melting pot), is so racially and ethnically diverse, the Black subsample included a number of elderly Caribbean (West Indian) immigrants who are Black. As indicated in Lyons' writings, for decades scholars have pointed to the limited empirical data on Black immigrants, because it is the general perception that they share the same culture as African Americans. Recent studies on elderly Blacks including the large scale National Surrey on Black American (NBSA) revealed wide diversity among Blacks (Jackson, Chatters & Taylor, 1993). However, foreign-born Blacks, specifically West Indian immigrant cohorts, were neglected

This study by Lyons is an important step in correcting this omission. In it she offers a comprehensive literature review of research in important areas often discussed in studies pertaining to Blacks, including the church and religion, family structures and experiences with and preferences for informal and formal supports. Utilizing, a well-established and tested conceptual framework regarding service utilization by the elderly, she tests our important hypothesis regarding similarities and differences between native born and Caribbean immigrant Blacks in the use of community services and the nature of their respective needs for assistance from the formal service community. Although she fails to find major differences in level and patterns of service utilization between the two groups, she suggests the difficulty in explaining differences with existing individual service models on traditional variables frequently utilized in studies of older people. This is an important area for future research if we are to understand the underlying nature of diversity among populations and I am convinced that Sociocultural differences between elderly American-born and West Indian-born Blacks is the first in a series of studies that she will pursue focusing on elderly West Indians and their African American counterparts.

Beverly Lyons is herself West Indian and was born and raised in Jamaica. She has been living in the United States for almost three decades and has an interdisciplinary health care background having worked for many years in hospitals, nursing homes and home health care services. It is the richness of this background that contributes so significantly to her understanding and sensitivity to the needs of minorities and her ability to draw inferences and implications from her study findings. This publication is of importance to service providers, policy makers, students and scholars involved in ethnocentric gerontology. Because of my continuing research interest on the impact of race, ethnicity and class on how people grow older in the United States today, I particularly welcome this important book, Sociocultural differences between elderly American-born and West Indian-born Blacks, and hope that it will reach the wide audience it deserves.

Marjorie H. Cantor
Professor and Brookdale Distinguished Scholar
Graduate School of Social Services
Fordham University

Research on the sociocultural aspects of aging with respect to African Americans is sparse. Some available studies on African Americans have treated them as a culturally homogeneous group, despite evidence to the contrary. Other studies have attempted to show diversity among African Americans, for instance, the National Survey of Black Americans (NBSA). However, elderly foreign-born Black cohorts were not included in this large scale study.

For decades scholars have pointed to the dearth of empirical information on Black emigrants in general, and West Indian-born immigrants, in specific. In summary, they have asserted that Black immigrants have only received attention in passing with respect to research focusing on immigration policies, and problems. Some have actually overlooked West Indian-born immigrants and have claimed that they have merged themselves into the African American grouping.

This book provides needed integration and synthesis of information on elderly U.S. mainland-born Blacks and their foreignborn peers. It is a secondary analysis of data from the large scale studyGrowing older in New York City in the 1990s(M. Cantor and B. Gurland, principal investigators), commissioned by the New York Community Trust and a consortium of foundations and undertaken jointly by Fordham and Columbia Universities. This, the current publication examines the sociocultural differences between elderly U.S. mainland-born and West Indian-born Blacks and compares the ways in which they use health and social services. It uses a modified, adaptation of Andersen's (health services) and Ward's (social services) utilization models as the conceptual framework to guide the study. The model used focuses on the process by which individuals progress along a continuum of demand characteristics to the actual use of services. Utilization of services is measured by the number of services used