The Mexican Health and Aging Study (MHAS) started as a prospective panel study of health and aging in Mexico. MHAS was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health/ National Institute on Aging (R01AG018016, BJ Soldo, PI).

The study was a collaborative effort among researchers from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Wisconsin in the U.S., and the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografia e Informática (INEGI) in Mexico. The baseline survey, with national and urban/rural representation of adults born in 1951 or earlier, was conducted in the summer of 2001 and a follow-up was fielded in the summer of 2003.

The second phase of MHAS is partly supported by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging (R01AG018016, R Wong, PI). The new study is a collaborative effort among researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), the University of Wisconsin, the University of Pennsylvania, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI, Mexico), the Instituto Nacional de Geriatría (INGer, Mexico) and the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública (INSP, Mexico).