Neighborhoods may influence late-life health through a number of pathways (see Figure 1). The IOM (1991) disablement framework, which distinguishes among disease, functional limitation, and disability, serves as the starting point for this framework. We extend the IOM framework to include mortality and self-rated general health status, which are both influenced by disease, functional limitation, and disability, as well as the variety of individual and neighborhood factors that influence health in general. We highlight this process in late-life in the Figure, although the process happens continuously throughout the lifecourse; that is, similar “early-life health” and “mid-life health” boxes exist, which.
