Monitoring Social Change: Health, Reproduction, Aging
The level and scope of social change underway in China represents one of the great social experiments of our time. The reform process has included the privatization of functions previously performed by the state and the unleashing of private entrepreneurship and a range of initiatives in the public sector. The subsequent effects on economics, social behavior, health, nutrition, and demographic behavior have been profound. Furthermore, China joined the World Trade Organization December 11, 2001, and membership is expected to bring about another major restructuring of the Chinese economy in the 2002-2010 period. The China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) is unique in its scope for monitoring these changes in China. The China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) is a multipurpose panel survey that has followed more than 19,000 individual in 216 communities throughout China from 1989 to 2006. This survey collects data on occupations, incomes, and benefits of working-age household members; time use; diet and nutritional status; activities of daily living, health status, and use of health services; marriages and pregnancies of reproductive age women; household size and composition; living arrangements; care of children and elders; housing conditions; land ownership; and household expenditures. Individual health related data are highly detailed, and include carefully measured dietary intake, physical activity, smoking and drinking data, anthropometrics, blood pressure and limited clinical data from all respondents. Because of its long duration and wide geographic coverage, the CHNS can document the dramatic economic, social, behavioral and health status changes which have characterized China in the past several decades. The existing data represent a resource of enormous value to the population, health, and social science research and policy communities. Newly linked longitudinal files have contributed to a rapid increase in the last 3 years of the user base for these data. In 2007, there were over 1,840 registered users. 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. An array of biomarkers related to nutrition, heart disease, diabetes and inflammation and stress will be assayed and results will be available for public use. This project includes plans to store DNA and frozen blood samples, toenail and blood spot samples for outside researchers to access, to provide access to our collection of added spatial data and linkage of other data. While we have seen in each of the last 3 years a doubling of users of these data, these new changes will make the CHNS increasingly valuable to scholars.
Principal Investigator: Barry M. Popkin
CPC Fellow Investigator: Linda S. Adair , Michael E. Emch , Shuwen Ng
Other Investigators: Shufa Du, Fengying Zhai (Chinese Center for Disease Control, Beijing, China), Karen Mohlke, Ka He, Huijun Wang (Chinese Center for Disease Control, Beijing, China)
Funding Source: NIH NICHD
Grant Number: 2-R01-HD030880
Funding Period: 6/1/2008 - 5/31/2013
Related CPC Signature Theme:
Affiliated Research Project:
