Funded Grants and Contracts
Following is the full list of currently funded research grants and contracts, supported by federal and non-federal agencies and foundations. The project descriptions offer a survey of the multidisciplinary nature of CPC research and its far-reaching influence in the population field.
Research Grants • Center Grants • Training Grants
Carolina Population Center -- NICHD Center Grant
As one of the NIH/NICHD-funded population centers, the mission of the Carolina Population Center is to support the population and training interests of its faculty fellows, with the goal of producing cutting-edge research and using the research process to train the next generation of scholars. The funded projects and training activities represent a broad and impressive array of interdisciplinary and disciplinary research activities. The research services are organized into six cores: administrative, biomedical, computer, information, spatial analysis, and statistical. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Demography and Economics of Aging and the Life Course (P30)
This grant supports the Carolina Population Center's Demography and Economics of Aging Research (DEAR) Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The DEAR Center is housed at CPC and collaborates with the Institute on Aging at UNC-CH to support a research program in population aging. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Donna Gilleskie
Age at First Sex, Genes, Religion, and Other Social & Demographic Context
The goal of this project is to identify the influences of genetic and environmental factors and their interactions on risky sexual behavior in adolescence using a subsample of about 2,600 participants of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Guang Guo, Kirk Wilhelmsen, Departments of Genetics and Neurology, UNC-CH
An Interdisciplinary Strategy for Obesity
The long-term goal of this interdisciplinary project is to define effective interventions for prevention and treatment of obesity. This NIH Roadmap planning grant builds on the collaborative environment at UNC that includes departments in the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, Allied Health Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences, and NIH-funded Centers that are addressing the obesity epidemic, including the Clinical Nutrition Research Center, Carolina Population Center, the Center for Environmental Health Sciences and the Lineberger Cancer Center. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
Circular Migration and Its Long-Term Implications
The research examines the determinants of patterns of young adult migration, and the consequences of these patterns on place of residence at age 30. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Ronald R. Rindfuss
Continuity and Change in the Religious Lives of American Youth: Tracking NSYR Respondents
This project extends the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), a national research project on the religious practices of American youth funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Lisa D. Pearce
Demographic Data Sharing and Archiving
The specific aims of this project are to: (1) provide investigators with tools that will enable them to disseminate public access versions of their data; (2) provide investigators with tools and strategies for the dissemination of restricted-access data (3) assist investigators in ensuring that potential users can locate their data, get support in all the stages of acquisition and use, and receive appropriate training in data use; (4) provide long-term secure archiving of public-use and restricted use data, in order to ensure that the data are permanently preserved for future use; and (5) improve the science of data sharing and archiving through a program of research and development in key areas. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Diet, Activity, Obesity & the Built Environment
This longitudinal study will link contemporaneous geographic locations of respondents with diet-related (e.g., food shopping and eating options) and activity-related (e.g., recreation, community design) built environment variables to data from an exceptional dataset including quality diet and physical activity data. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
Doctoral Dissertation Research: Out-Migration, Environmental Change and Rural Livelihoods in the Southern Ecuadorian Andes
This project investigates interactions between out-migration, rural livelihoods and environment / landscape change for an important center of out-migration in the southern Ecuadorian Andes. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Richard E. Bilsborrow, Clark Gray
Does Arsenic Mitigation in Bangladesh Raise Exposure to E. coli and Rotavirus? Subcontract from Columbia University.
The premise of this project is that the microbial contamination of shallow groundwater in a densely populated rural setting such as Bangladesh is a significant, but overlooked, factor that affects the distribution of certain forms of diarrheal disease. This premise will be systematically addressed with field data by comparing the behavior of two organisms, Shigella and rotavirus, both of which are leading causes of diarrheal disease in rural Bangladesh, as well as the fecal indicators E. coli and Bateroides, across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Michael Emch, Serre, Marc
Dynamically Integrating Macro and Micro Processes
This project will develop tools to study social processes involving individuals, households, social networks, and communities in relation to health. The application of these tools will help us better understand and interpret the research literature connecting community factors with health outcomes and provide a complement to the standard statistical approaches. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Feedbacks Among Patterns and Processes of Land Use and Land Cover Dynamics in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon
The objective of this study is to model the dynamics of land use land cover change (LULCC) in the northern Oriente and understand the dynamics of the coupled human-environment system. The hypothesis is that critical points in the spatial structure of LULC patterns and feedbacks have produced a system with potential alternative states and dynamics characterized by phase changes. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Stephen J. Walsh
Frontier Migration and the Rural Environment in Ecuador
The proposal focuses on how environmental degradation such as deforestation or soil erosion influence why people leave rural areas of Ecuador. People are leaving rural areas all over the world for cities and other countries. Environmental degradation makes it harder for people to make a living, and causes health problems too. The proposal studies whether having good local health facilities and road access to them helps people cope and remain in rural areas rather than leave. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Richard E. Bilsborrow
Gene-Environment Interaction in Adolescent Depression (F31 Award for Daniel Adkins)
Several lines of evidence indicate monoaminergic neurotransmission, environmental stress and their interaction play prominent roles in depression etiology. This project will investigate this process in adolescents and young adults by modeling the direct and interactive effects of environmental risk and candidate genes influencing neurotransmission. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Guang Guo, Daniels Adkins
HSD: Collaborative Research: Dynamics of Parks as Agents of Change in Eastern & Southern Africa
This project aims to examine the inter-relationship of livelihood diversification and social and environmental change outside protected areas in eastern and southern Africa. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Paul W. Leslie, J. Terrence McCabe, University of Colorado at Boulder, Abraham C. Goldman, University of Florida
HSD: Marginality in a Marginal Environment: An Agent-Based Approach to Population-Environment Relationships
The investigators undertaking this interdisciplinary research project hypothesize that across multiple social and spatial-temporal scales, marginal populations are especially likely to be affected by weather-related events, partly because of their location in marginal environments and also because of dynamic feedbacks involving human behavior. To test this hypothesis, the investigators will construct an agent-based simulation model for Nang Rong, a study site in Northeast Thailand with unusually detailed data. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Human Development and the Life Course
This senior scholar fellowship with a focus on the transition to adulthood involves a research plan that includes two major phases: (1) family influences along pathways to adulthood, with emphasis on parents, grandparents, and other relatives; and (2) family and non-family influences on divergent pathways--resilient and vulnerable--to adulthood, such as the educative influences of older siblings, mentors, employers, and friends. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Glen H. Elder, Jr.
Inequality and Disability among Older Adults: Paths to Differential Trajectories
Although the health of older Americans has been improving on the whole, racial/ethinic health disparities continue to grow. This project will examine demographic, health, socioeconomic, behavioral, psychological, support, structural, and contextual factors predicting disability and mortality differentials for blacks and whites in addition to the unique causal pathways by gender among the most disadvantaged racial group (blacks) in the United States. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Taylor, Miles
Infant Care, Feeding, and Risk of Obesity
This research will examine the household factors that influence parenting and infant feeding patterns, the relationship of feeding styles to infant diet, and the relationship of dietary intake to infant fatness. This study will be conducted among African American mothers and infants in North Carolina, a group at high risk for the development of obesity. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Margaret E. Bentley
Management Matters: Consequences of Managerial Composition
As gatekeepers and policymakers, managers are central to labor market inequality. Managerial positions are a scarce resource, unequally distributed. However, much less frequently studied is how managers themselves affect the relative status of their subordinates. We will address this question by examining the association between managerial composition and inequality among nonmanagerial workers. Ours will be the first study to combine longitudinal organizational data with a national sample of U.S. workers in a study of managerial composition and labor market outcomes. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Philip N. Cohen
MEASURE Evaluation Task Order
The Global Health Monitoring and Evaluation Task Order is implemented by John Snow Inc., partnering with the Carolina Population Center at UNC, Tulane University, Macro International Inc., and Constella Futures. The goal of the Task Order is to improve the collection, analysis, and presentation of data to promote better use of data in planning, policy-making, managing, monitoring, and evaluating PHN programs. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Sian L. Curtis
Modeling Household Dynamics and Land Use
The research uses an empirically informed agent-based simulation approach to examine the dynamic interrelationships among migration, household assets, and land use within a larger and changing social and biophysical environment. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results (MEASURE Phase II)
MEASURE Evaluation develops and promotes cost-effective and efficient approaches in data collection, monitoring and evaluation of population, health, and nutrition services worldwide to improve human health and well-being. The project covers: family planning, maternal and child health and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Gustavo Angeles, Sian L. Curtis
Monitoring Social Change: Health, Reproduction, Aging
This grant extends data collection for the China Health and Nutrition Study by two rounds, resulting in data covering a 22-year period (1989-2011). The project monitors economic, social, and behavioral changes in China. The current round of project funding will further enhance the value of this unique survey by adding rounds of data collection in 2009 and 2011 and expanding the scope of the survey to include, for the first time, collection of fasting blood samples (on all children and adults aged 2 and older) for analysis of disease-related biomarkers and DNA, toenail and blood spot samples, and geographic data to permit spatial analysis. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
Multi-Agent Models of Land Cover/Land Use Dynamics in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon: Coupling Human & Natural Systems through Pattern-Process Relations and Spatial Simulations
This research project is framed by a set of defined scenarios or experiments of development versus conservation in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon in which the primary stakeholder groups (i.e., colonists, indigenous populations, the petroleum sectorm, local urban communities, and protected lands and conservation forests established by the government) are modeled and spatial simulations developed to assess possible alternative future trajectories of land use/land cover change. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Stephen J. Walsh
Obesity Development and CVD Risk Factor Clustering in Filipino Women & Offspring
This research aims to identify determinants of weight gain and development of cardiovascular disease risk factors in an Asian population undergoing the nutrition transition. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Linda S. Adair
Parental Incarceration and Intergenerational Social Exclusion: The Long Arm of the Law
The Add Health study will include questionnaire items on parental incareration for a Northwestern University study funded by NSF and administered by the American Bar Association. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Kathleen Mullan Harris
Partner Violence Norms and HIV Risk-Taking Among Youth in Sub-Saharan Africa
This study uses secondary data from more than fifteen recent African Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) to examine the association between partner violence norms and youth HIV risk and preventive behaviors in sub-Saharan Africa. The
information obtained from this study can be used to make recommendations on strategies to reduce youth violence risk
with the underlying objective of strengthening HIV prevention programs for youth. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Ilene S. Speizer
Physical Environment Dynamics, Inequality and Obesity
This study focuses on how numerous community characteristics interact with race/ethnicity and other key socioeconomic factors to affect physical activity, inactivity, and overweight status in American youths as they make the transition from adolescence to adulthood. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
PIRE Collaborative Research and Training in Social Context, Population Processes, and Environmental Change
This new interdisciplinary multi-site program is designed to train the next generation of scientists to conduct the international collaborative research needed to address important issues of global environmental change. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Lisa D. Pearce
Prenatal Nutrition and Adverse Birth Outcomes in HIV-infected women in Malawi
This study will describe the patterns and determinants of maternal diet and nutritional status in mid to late pregnancy among HIV-infected women in Lilongwe, Malawi, and relate their diet and nutritional status to birth outcomes, including low birth weight, small-size-for-gestational age at birth (SGA), and preterm births. The study will also evaluate the contribution of a World Food Program food ration given to HIV-infected women, assessing how the food supplement was consumed, whether it enhanced maternal dietary intake and diet quality, and whether it affected nutritional status and birth outcomes. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Linda S. Adair
Relating multiple dimensions of stress to CVD risk in Filipino adults
This project is linked to a parent grant funded by NHLBI, titled "Obesity Development and CVD Risk Factor Clustering in Filipino Women & Offspring" (HL085144). This project extends the parent grant's research to examine the role of a wide range of psychosocial, environmental and behavioral factors that represent multiple dimensions of stress. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Linda S. Adair
Religion's Role in the Shaping of Self-Image, Aspirations, and Achievement in Youth
This study investigates the influence of religion on how youth perceive themselves and prepare for their futures. It focuses on self-image, educational and career aspirations, and educational achievement. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Lisa D. Pearce
Social Context and Immigrant Adaptation
Using two existing data sets, this study aims to enrich our understanding of the social contexts of immigrant adaptation in new receiving communities in North Carolina. Specifically, the project aims to: (1) examine how acculturation experiences of Latino youth vary by school and neighborhood contexts, (2) determine to what extent differences in school-level characteristics (e.g., school race-ethnic concentrations, student body socioeconomic background, and background and training of school personnel) resources affect the mental health and academic experiences of Latino youth, and (3) evaluate the effects of neighborhood contexts (e.g. unemployment levels, poverty levels, and the size of the co-ethnic population) on the mental health and academic experiences of Latino youth. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Krista M. Perreira
Social Networks and Migration
The research uses a unique, prospective, longitudinal data set that has complete social network data at origin measured in 1994 for 51 villages in Nang Rong district, Northeast Thailand, and then follows people over time (to 2000) in origin and destinations. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Southern Immigrant Academic Adaptation Study
This study will be the first population-based study of the daily acculturation experiences and academic adaptation of Latino youth in a new receiving community. Moreover, this study will capitalize on research already completed in Los Angeles to allow comparisons between a traditional and new immigrant receiving community. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Krista M. Perreira
The Feasibility of Replacement Feeding as an HIV Prevention Method in Malawi
The Breastfeeding, Antiretroviral, and Nutrition (BAN) study is an on-going, randomized controlled trial in Lilongwe, Malawi that is evaluating antiretroviral and nutrition interventions to reduce mother-to-child transmission of HIV during breastfeeding. Using quantitative data from the on-going BAN Study, this project will determine overall nutrient adequacy of the infant diet at 7-12 months. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Margaret E. Bentley
The Geography of Avian Influenza Evolution: Spatial and Temporal Relationships Between Virus Genes and Human-Environment Factors
The project will develop tools to study AIV evolution and the ecosystems factors in which it is associated. The ultimate goal of this effort is to enhance basic understanding of human-environment ecosystem drivers of influenza viral evolution. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Michael Emch
The National Children's Study
The study will measure the effects of environmental, social, biological and behavioral factors on child health. The goal is to understand causes for a range of health problems, including asthma, developmental delays, autism, and obesity. The study will collect information from families about their health, their activities, and their neighborhoods. Various biological samples, along with air and water at home and in schools will also be collected. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Barbara Entwisle, Anna Maria Siega-Riz, Dole, Nancy
The National Children's Study - Duplin County Vanguard Center
The goal of the National Children's Study is to identify sample of 100,000 children, as early as possible in pregnancy, and follow them for 21 years to address the causes of a variety of health problems including obesity, injuries, asthma, and developmental delays. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Barbara Entwisle, Nancy Dole, Co-PI
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
This study will follow up in the year 2000, the nationally representative sample studied between 1994 and 1996 for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The primary purpose of the follow-up is to determine the later health effects of adolescence as our study participants move into young adulthood. The project's long-term goal is to provide the research community with a public use dataset that, when linked to the existing Add Health data set now in the public domain, will provide a powerful scientific tool for the study of health transitions in adolescence and young adulthood. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Kathleen Mullan Harris
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research for Dr. Tirzah Spencer)
Using a contextual life course approach, this project uses waves I - III of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) which over-samples African-American youth from higher status families, Chinese youth, Cuban and Puerto Rican adolescents to explore among adolescent females, components of stress in the family context, styles of coping and physical activity patterns. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Kathleen Mullan Harris, Tirzah Spencer, CPC Postdoctoral Scholar
Understanding Change in Physical Activity Postpartum
This study (1) identifies whether changes in physiologic, psychosocial, and environmental mediators are associated with changes in physical activity from pregnancy to postpartum, and (2) examines whether changes in physical activity during this time are moderated by sociodemographic, health, and neighborhood measures, among a cohort of women. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Kelly Evenson
Young Adult Environmental and Physical Activity Dynamics
This longitudinal study will link contemporaneous geographic locations of respondents with physical environment variables and data from an exceptional dataset including quality physical activity data. This study uses four study years (1985, 1992, 1995, and 2001) of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study [CARDIA], a longitudinal study of the antecedents and risk factors for cardiovascular disease in an ethnicity-, age- and sex-balanced cohort of 5,115 black and white young adults aged 18-30 years at baseline to examine relationships between environmental factors and physical activity. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
Demography of Aging and the Life Course
Training grant in the demography of aging and the life course as a special component in a long-standing training program in interdisciplinary population research. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Glen H. Elder, Jr.
Doctoral Training in Nutrition Epidemiology (Fellowship Award for Daisy Zamora)
This NRSA award for Daisy Zamora focuses on diet-induced obesity and its application to public health in both national and international settings. The research focuses on the physical and social environmental factors that play a role in the development of obesity. [More Details...]
Principal Investigators: Barry M. Popkin, Daisy Zamora
Incorporating a Biomedical Perspective in Population-Based Research
The overall goal of this training program is to equip current and future population researchers with the skills needed to address the multidisciplinary challenges of this new research agenda. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
Integrative Graduate Education, Research, and Training in Population and Environment
An integrative graduate education, research, and training IGERT program in population and environment, with a focus on land use and land cover change. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
International Training in Population, Health, and Aging
Researchers at the Carolina Population Center have established a set of collaborations in international settings to study population and health issues associated with rapid societal change, the environment, and the long-term effects of fetal and infant undernutrition. Collaborators are eminent research institutions in China, the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, and Ecuador. This grant consists of a mix of short-, medium-, and long-term training of researchers, graduate students, and established scholars. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
Population Research Training
The objective of this NICHD-NRSA training grant is to develop in CPC trainees the skills needed for carrying out successful population-relevant research, primarily through hands-on collaboration with experienced faculty researchers. The keystone of the training program is an individualized faculty mentor preceptor-trainee relationship. Trainees collaborate with their faculty mentors in population-relevant research. [More Details...]
Principal Investigator: Barbara Entwisle
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