Carolina Population Center

CANCELED: Chantel Martin: Embodying Place: Neighborhood Environment and Health Disparities
2020-03-20 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update this page when it’s rescheduled.
On March 20, 2020, Chantel Martin, a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Embodying Place: Neighborhood Environment and Health Disparities” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Martin is also a Postdoctoral Scholar at CPC.
Chantel Martin is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Epidemiology and the Carolina Population Center at UNC Chapel Hill. As an epidemiologist, her interdisciplinary research program combines methods and models from social science, biology, and life course epidemiology to understand the impact of the social environment during sensitive periods of development on racial/ethnic disparities in cardiometabolic health disparities; and elucidate the biological underpinnings that link the social environment to health disparities. Her research is currently supported by an NIH K99/R00 Pathways to Independence Award and the NIMHD Social Epigenomics Research Focused on Minority Health and Health Disparities program. Chantel received her PhD in Epidemiology from UNC Chapel Hill and her MSPH from UNC Charlotte. Her talk will explore the association of the neighborhood social environment with cardiometabolic health across the life course and introduce potential biological mechanisms that may partially explain these associations.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: Becky Pettit: Illusions of Justice: Crime and Punishment in a Model Reform State
2020-03-27 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update as soon as we can reschedule for later this year.
On March 27, 2020, Becky Pettit, the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professorship of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin, will present “Illusions of Justice: Crime and Punishment in a Model Reform State” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Becky Pettit is the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a sociologist, trained in demographic methods, with interests in social inequality broadly defined. She is the author of two books and numerous articles which have appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Social Problems, Social Forces and other journals. Her book, Invisible Men: Mass Incarceration and the Myth of Black Progress (Russell Sage Foundation 2012), investigates how decades of growth in America’s prisons and jails obscures basic accounts of racial inequality. Her first book, co-authored with Jennifer Hook of the University of Southern California, Gendered Tradeoffs: Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries (Russell Sage Foundation 2009) was selected as a Noteworthy Book in Industrial Relations and Labor Economics in 2010.
Pettit has been the recipient of many honors and awards. Her paper “Black-White Wage Inequality, Employment Rates, and Incarceration” (with Bruce Western of Columbia University) received the James Short paper award from the American Sociological Association Crime, Law, and Deviance Section. Another paper “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration” (with Western) received Honorable Mention from the American Sociological Association Sociology of Law Section Article Prize Committee. A related paper (also with Hook) was a finalist for the 2006 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. She was elected to membership in the Sociological Research Association in 2018.
Pettit has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, Northwestern University, and the American Bar Foundation, and was a recipient of a mentored research development award (K01) from the National Institutes of Health (NICHD) for her work on “Institutionalizing Inequality: Gender, Work and Family.” Pettit’s research has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, MSNBC, and numerous other media outlets. She has been invited to speak at the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Census Bureau, and many colleges and universities.
Professor Pettit teaches courses on social inequality, methods, and statistics. She edited Social Problems, the official journal of the Society of the Study of Social Problems, from 2011-2014. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and a B.A. in sociology from University of California at Berkeley.
Presentation Abstract:
Abstract: Two decades of crime declines in the United States and significant and sustained policy attention to criminal justice reform has led some observers to suggest that the U.S. is reconsidering its experiment in mass incarceration. Most Americans are at the lowest risk of victimization in a generation and some states, like Texas, have attracted outsized attention for reform efforts to reduce the number of people held in state prisons and jails, decrease sentence lengths and time served, and offer community-based supervision and non-custodial sanctions. However, and despite significant rhetoric of criminal justice reform, incarceration and criminal justice contact in the United States more broadly – and the Lonestar state specifically – remains historically and comparatively high. Texas sanctions more people each year through the criminal justice system than live in Wyoming, Vermont, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Delaware, and Montana combined. In this paper, I examine whether and how contemporary criminal justice policy in Texas influences exposure to the criminal justice system. I consider how recent reforms in criminal justice policy and practice impact different demographic groups, influence accounts of inequality, and align with principles of justice.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: Nancy Krieger: Structural Racism and People's Health: History and Context Matters
2020-04-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update as soon as we can reschedule for later this year.
On April 3, 2020, Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health., Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will present “Structural Racism and People’s Health: History and Context Matters” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Nancy Krieger is Professor of Social Epidemiology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She has been a member of the School’s faculty since 1995. Dr. Krieger is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist (PhD, Epidemiology, UC Berkeley, 1989), with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and history of public health, plus 30+ years of activism involving social justice, science, and health. In 2004, she became an ISI highly cited scientist, a group comprising “less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers, with her ranking reaffirmed in the 2015 update.” In 2013, she received the Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association, and in 2015, she was awarded the American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship. In 2019, Dr. Krieger was ranked as being “in the top 0.01% of scientists based on your impact” for both total career and in 2017 by a new international standardized citations metrics author database, including as #1 among the 90 top scientists listed for 2017 with a primary field of public health and secondary field of epidemiology (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384)
Dr. Krieger’s work addresses three topics: (1) conceptual frameworks to understand, analyze, and improve the people’s health, including the ecosocial theory of disease distribution she first proposed in 1994 and its focus on embodiment and equity; (2) etiologic research on societal determinants of population health and health inequities; and (3) methodologic research on improving monitoring of health inequities. In April 2011, Dr. Krieger’s book, Epidemiology and the People’s Health: Theory and Context, was published by Oxford University Press. This book presents the argument for why epidemiologic theory matters. Tracing the history and contours of diverse epidemiologic theories of disease distribution from ancient societies on through the development of — and debates within — contemporary epidemiology worldwide, it considers their implications for improving population health and promoting health equity. She is also editor of Embodying Inequality: Epidemiologic Perspectives (Baywood Press, 2004) and co-editor, with Glen Margo, of AIDS: The Politics of Survival (Baywood Publishers, 1994), and, with Elizabeth Fee, of Women’s Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public Health (Baywood Publishers, 1994). In 1994 she co-founded, and still chairs, the Spirit of 1848 Caucus of the American Public Health Association, which is concerned with the links between social justice and public health.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.

CANCELED: Courtney Boen: Embodying Racism: Patterns and Determinants of Racial Disparities in Health and Aging
2020-04-17 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
This event has been canceled. We will update as soon as we can reschedule for later this year.
On April 17, 2020, Courtney Boen, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, will present “Embodying Racism: Patterns and Determinants of Racial Disparities in Health and Aging” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. Boen is an alumni of the CPC Training Program.
Boen’s research focuses primarily on the social determinants of population health inequality, with particular attention to the social factors producing racial and socioeconomic health inequities. Utilizing biomarkers of physiological functioning and cellular aging and a variety of analytic techniques, her work aims to improve scientific understanding how macro-level social inequality “gets under the skin” to produce health disparities from birth through late life. Currently, she is engaged in several projects that examine how exposure to racism-related stress in various domains of social life (e.g., in neighborhoods, in contacts with the criminal justice system, and in interpersonal interactions) contributes to racial disparities in pre-disease biological markers of health and aging. Her other ongoing and previous studies further investigate the social factors producing racial and socioeconomic health disparities. She has examined how disparities in socioeconomic conditions—including differential access to wealth and exposure to early-life socioeconomic disadvantage—contribute to population health inequality. I have also collaborated on projects that assess how access to social relationships and exposure to relationship strain contribute to disparities in health and disease risk. Her research has been published in Social Science and Medicine, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Biodemography and Social Biology, and the Journal of Aging and Health.
Presentation Abstract:
The divergence and persistence of Black-White health gaps from mid- and late life has led scholars to hypothesize that Black Americans may experience accelerated aging relative to Whites due to racial differences in social exposures. Still, the social and biological processes undergirding racial disparities in health and mortality remain to be better understood. In this talk, I bridge insights from critical race theory and biodemography to examine the life course patterns and determinants of Black-White disparities in health and aging. First, using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), I assess Black-White gaps in biological aging and further examine the role of life course socioeconomic and stress exposures in producing racial disparities in biological age acceleration. Next, drawing on work using a variety of survey and social media data, I show how exposure to vicarious and cultural racism-related stress may also play an essential—but largely underestimated role—in producing Black-White patterns of health and aging. Together, findings from these studies show that, while life course socioeconomic exposures are critical drivers of racial health disparities, socioeconomic resources cannot “buy” Black Americans the health protections associated with whiteness. In order to more fully capture the role of racism in shaping population health inequality, research on racial disparities in health and aging must expand beyond individual measures of social exposures to also integrate measures reflecting the interactional, cultural, and structural nature of racism.
The Carolina Population Center hosts a weekly Friday lecture on a topic that enhances our understanding of population-related changes. The 2019-2020 Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will feature talks related to aging trajectories, health behavior, the Zika virus, and the beverage tax – among other topics.
All seminars are held from 12:00 – 1:00 pm in Carolina Square Room 2002 at 123 W. Franklin St. unless otherwise indicated.
We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
Instructors: To arrange for class attendance, contact CPC (cpc@unc.edu) by the Monday before the seminar.

Margaret Hicken: Landscapes of racial dispossession and control: Cultural and structural racism and population health inequities
2020-11-13 12:00 - 13:00
On November 13, 2020, Margaret Hicken, a Research Associate Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research Survey Research Center, will present “Landscapes of racial dispossession and control: Cultural and structural racism and population health inequities” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
The health inequalities between Black and White Americans have been well-documented for decades, with much of the population and public health literature still focused on individual-level behaviors and health care. A small but growing literature has called for an emphasis on structural racism as the root driver of these inequalities, but often focus solely on single institutional aspects of US structure, on contemporary forms of racism, and/or on the psychosocial impact of racism. In the Landscapes of Racial Dispossession and Control project, historical and contemporary forms of racial violence are linked through notions of cultural racism to result in sustained racial health inequalities. Cultural racism is composed of our shared values, ideologies, and beliefs of what it means to be American. These value systems then shape the ways our interconnected and symbiotic institutions operate to create our social structure. In other words, cultural racism shapes the structural answers to “Whose life counts?”. With a framework linking cultural and structural racism through history, the fundamental drivers — and potential intervention points — of contemporary population health inequalities becomes clearer.
Bio:
Maggie Hicken is an interdisciplinary population health scientist with training in both demography and epidemiology as well as molecular and cellular biology and population genetics. She examines notions of cultural and structural racism and their relation to health inequities through biological mechanisms. Much of her research to date has focused on cultural racism and the toxic burden of vigilance on the part of Black Americans as they navigate everyday White space as well as on modifying impact of biosocial stress on the association between environmental hazards and health. With her K01 award, she gained training in population genetics and has examined the role of the social environment in the link between genes and chronic conditions. Further, with her current R01-funded research, she is examining the both historical and contemporary forms of residential segregation, the interactive impact of social stressors and environmental hazards, and DNA methylation patterns that might be associated with racial inequalities in aging. Through each thread of her research, Dr. Hicken weaves together theory from the humanities, legal studies, and social science to clarify the root causes of racial health inequalities.
This event will be held on Zoom and is closed to the public. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

John Batsis: The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts? The Importance of Fat and Muscle in the Aging Process.
2021-02-26 12:00 - 13:00
On February 26, 2021, John Batsis, an Associate Professor, Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gillings School of Global Public Health, will present “The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts? The Importance of Fat and Muscle in the Aging Process” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
With the population of adults aged 65 years and older increasing, so is the prevalence of obesity and the risk of developing age-related loss of muscle mass and strength, termed sarcopenia. These two disease entities independently increase a person’s risk for impaired physical function, disability, and death. Yet, a subset is classified as having sarcopenic obesity which is thought to be at higher risk for synergistic complications from both sarcopenia and obesity. This presentation will initially describe the importance and consequences of obesity, sarcopenia, and the consequences of the two in older adults. The emerging literature on health promotion will be presented along with the critical gaps and existing barriers that need to be overcome to advance the field and translate findings into clinical practice.
Biography:
Dr. Batsis is a geriatrician and health services researcher that recently joined the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill in September 2020. Previously, he was on faculty at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth since 2008. He has considerable experience in large datasets analyses where he has evaluated important relationships between the changes observed in fat and muscle with aging (obesity and sarcopenia) on important outcomes relevant to older adults, including mortality and physical function. His specific interests are in the synergistic impact of obesity and low muscle mass and strength, sarcopenic obesity, and has published extensively in this field. Dr. Batsis recently is a participating member on an International Consensus Definition workgroup for this syndrome.
His recent work has focused on translating large-dataset epidemiology-based work to clinical trials in older adults. He is focusing on obesity and the use of technology to improve one’s health. Dr. Batsis has a keen interest in health promotion through the lifecourse and has focused his interests in body composition changes during weight loss efforts. He has written explicitly on the importance of close monitoring in this population. Importantly, he leverages his ongoing experience in providing clinical care in the outpatient and nursing home settings to older adults with multimorbidity and frailty which inform his research work.
Dr. Batsis is currently funded by the National Institute on Aging and has published over 140 papers. He has received several clinical and research accolades having received the New Investigator Award from the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) and was selected to the prestigious TidesWell Emerging Leaders in Aging Program for mid-career faculty in geriatrics. He is heavily involved at the national level as a long-standing member of the research committee of AGS and the Gerontological Society of America, and was a member of The Obesity Society’s Clinical Committee. He recently was appointed to the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and the Journal of Gerontological Medical Sciences.
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Michal Engelman: Deaths, Disparities, and Cumulative (Dis)Advantage: How Social Inequities shape an Impairment Paradox in Later Life
2021-03-05 12:00 - 13:00
On March 5 2021, Michal Engelman, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will present “Deaths, Disparities, and Cumulative (Dis)Advantage: How Social Inequities shape an Impairment Paradox in Later Life” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract
Research on health across the life course consistently documents widening racial and socioeconomic disparities from childhood through adulthood, followed by stabilization, convergence,or cross-overs in later life. This pattern appears to contradict expectations informed by cumulative(dis)advantage theory, but may be a function of differential mortality risks earlier in the life course. Using the Health and Retirement Study, we characterize the functional impairment histories of a nationally-representative sample of 8,464 older adults between 1992-2016. Employing non-parametric analyses and discrete outcome multinomial logistic regressions, we examine how midlife health and social position influence subsequent health change, mortality and attrition at older ages. Exposures to disadvantages earlier in the life course are strongly associated with poorer functional health in midlife and with mortality. However, a higher number of functional limitations in midlife is negatively associated with the accumulation of subsequent limitations for white men and women and for Black women, but not Black men. The impact of social exposures such as educational attainment and marriage on later life health also differs across race and gender groups. The apparent convergence in later-life functional impairment across groups defined by race, gender, and socioeconomic status emerges from the impact of social and health inequities on earlier mortality. Higher exposure to disadvantages and a lower protective impact of advantageous exposures lead to higher mortality among Black Americans, a pattern which in turn masks persistent health inequities later in life.
Bio
Engelman is a demographer and gerontologist studying the dynamics of population aging and the determinants of longevity and well-being at older ages. Her work examines trajectories of health throughout the life course and their connection with changing aggregate patterns of mortality and morbidity over time. She is currently analyzing the implications of historical population change for contemporary health inequalities and developing a conceptual framework linking demographic and clinical notions of frailty and resilience with the sociological concept of cumulative disadvantage.

This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Cassandra Davis: Moving from research to practice: A reflection on hurricanes, schools, and stakeholders
2021-03-19 12:00 - 13:00
On March 19, 2021, Cassandra Davis, Research Assistant Professor of Public Policy at UNC, will present “Moving from research to practice: A reflection on hurricanes, schools, and stakeholders” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
In 2020 alone, FEMA declared ten major disaster declarations due to a hurricane or tropical storm across eight states and one U.S. territory. Research suggest that our current decade will see more hydrological hazards will greater intensity as compared to years prior. With this detrimental shift in our communities, how will schools fare in supporting the academic and emotional needs of their students and educators. In this presentation, Dr. Davis will share findings from her study that investigated the impact of hurricanes on educators and students in Texas and North Carolina. She will conclude with her process on engaging stakeholders at the regional, state, and federal levels.
Bio:
Cassandra R. Davis, Ph.D., is a research professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the environmental disruptions to schooling, specifically the impact of natural disasters on low-income, communities of color. Dr. Davis’ goal is to support educators, community leaders, and policymakers to improve responses, preparedness, and recovery in areas with the highest need. Her most recent project focus on the impact of COVID-19 on schooling communities and First-generation college students. From 2017-2020, Dr. Davis received funding from the National Science Foundation to explore the impacts of Hurricanes Florence (2018), Harvey (2017), and Matthew (2016), on schools, educators, and students. Dr. Davis has also collaborated with school districts to assist them with understanding and applying best practice strategies on topics related to recovering from natural hazards, improving graduation rates of underrepresented groups, supporting students with learning differences, identifying opportunity and achievement gaps amongst students, assessing the quality of professional development training for school personnel, and investigating ways to improving school-parent engagement.
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Margaret Sheridan: Deprivation and threat, testing conceptual model of adversity exposure and developmental outcomes
2021-04-09 12:00 - 13:00
On April 9, 2021, Margaret Sheridan, an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Deprivation and threat, testing conceptual model of adversity exposure and developmental outcomes” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-21 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series. This year, the CPC Interdisciplinary Research Seminars will be open to both CPC members and Social Epidemiology program members.
Abstract:
Exposure to childhood adversity is common and associated with a host of negative developmental outcomes as well as differences in neural structure and function. It is commonly posited that these social experiences “get under the skin” in early childhood, increasing long-term risk through disruptions to biology. In this talk I propose a novel approach to studying the link between adversity, brain development, and risk for psychopathology, the dimensional model of adversity and psychopathology (DMAP). In this model we propose that adversity exposure can be defined according to different dimensions which we expect to impact health and well-being through different neural substrates. Whereas we expect deprivation to primarily disrupt function and structure of lateral association cortex (e.g., dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and superior parietal cortex) and thus complex cognitive processing such as executive functioning. In contrast, we expect threat to alter structure and function of subcortical structures such as the hippocampus and amygdala and midline regions associated with emotion regulation such as the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and thus, associated emotion reactivity and automatic regulation processes. In a series of studies I test the basic tenants of the DMAP concluding that initial evidence, using both a priori hypothesis testing and data-driven approaches is consistent with the proposed model. I conclude by describing future work addressing multiple dimensions of adversity and potential adjustments to the model.
Bio:
Margaret Sheridan is an Assistant Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the director of the Child Imaging Research on Cognition and Life Experiences Lab (CIRCLE Lab). Margaret’s research examines typical and atypical neurodevelopment of the prefrontal cortex and related systems supporting development of executive function across age. In particular within the CIRCLE lab we examine how early life experiences ranging from maltreatment to poverty or institutionalization impact neural development leading to risk for externalizing psychopathology. Our work has demonstrated that exposure to a variety of early life adversities are related to deficits in function of the prefrontal cortex and that different exposures may impact neural development in specific ways. In particular exposures to threat or violence may impact neural development and thus risk for externalizing psychopathology differently than exposures characterized by a lack of social interaction, cognitive enrichment, and complex linguistic experience. The CIRCLE lab uses multiple neuroimaging methods (e.g., EEG/ERP, fMRI, structural MRI) and multiple behavioral methods (e.g., cognitive testing, structured clinical interview, in home observation) to achieve these goals.
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Nancy Krieger: COVID-19, structural racism, embodied histories, and the two-edged sword of data: structural problems require structural solutions
2021-04-23 12:00 - 13:00
On April 23, 2021, Nancy Krieger, Professor of Social Epidemiology, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health., Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will present “COVID-19, structural racism, embodied histories, and the two-edged sword of data: structural problems require structural solutions” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2020-2021 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Suggested readings from Dr. Krieger
Abstract:
COVID-19 has pulled the thread, starkly revealing both profound connections – and profound divisions – both within the US and within and between countries worldwide, with risk of infection, illness, and death profoundly and inequitably socially structured. Analyzing and acting to alter the myriad ways in which structural racism systemically generates health inequities, including for COVID-19, requires engaging with the two-edged sword of data. This sword cuts deeply with respect to the profound challenges of conceptualizing, operationalizing, and analyzing the very data deployed – i.e., racialized categories – to document racialized health inequities. In my presentation, I use the example of COVID-19 to dissect the sword’s two edges: (1) the non-use (Edge #1) and (2) problematic use (Edge #2) of data on racialized groups – but the point is data for health justice. Because structural problems require structural solutions, for both data and action for health justice, I conclude with recommendations for a new feasible enforceable institutional mandate for the reporting and analysis of publicly-funded work involving racialized groups and health data. A core requirement is that racialized health data must always be conceptually justified and analyzed in relation to relevant data about racialized societal inequities. A new opportunity arises as US government agencies re-engage with their work, with a stated commitment to racial and economic justice, to move forward with structural measures to sharpen and strengthen the work for health equity.
Bio:
Nancy Krieger is Professor of Social Epidemiology and American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor, in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH) and Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. Dr. Krieger is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist, with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and the history of public health, combined with over 35 years of activism linking issues involving social justice, science, and health. In 2004, she became an ISI highly cited scientist (reaffirmed: 2015 ISI update), a group comprising “less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers,” and in 2019 she was ranked as being “in the top 0.01% of scientists based on your impact” for both total career and in 2017 by a new international standardized citations metrics author database, including as #1 among the 90 top scientists listed for 2017 with a primary field of public health and secondary field of epidemiology (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000384). In 2013 she received the Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association, and in 2015, she was awarded the American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professorship, which was renewed in 2020; also in 2020, she was awarded the American College of Epidemiology’s “Outstanding Contributions to Epidemiology” award.
Informed by an analysis of the history and politics of epidemiology and public health, Dr. Krieger’s work addresses three topics: (1) conceptual frameworks to understand, analyze, and improve the people’s health, including her ecosocial theory of disease distribution, focused on embodiment and equity; (2) etiologic research on societal determinants of population health and health inequities, including structural racism and other types of adverse discrimination; and (3) methodologic research to improve monitoring of health inequities. She is author of Epidemiology and The People’s Health: Theory and Context (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2011) and editor for the OUP series “Small Books Big Ideas in Population Health” (starting with Political Epidemiology & The People’s Health, by Jason Beckfield, OUP, 2018; Climate Change & The People’s Health, by Sharon Friel, OUP, 2019; and Critical Epidemiology & The People’s Health by Jaime Brielh, OUP, 2021). She also is editor of Embodying Inequality: Epidemiologic Perspectives (Baywood Press, 2004) and co-editor, with Glen Margo, of AIDS: The Politics of Survival (Baywood Publishers, 1994), and, with Elizabeth Fee, of Women’s Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public Health (Baywood Publishers, 1994). In 1994 she co-founded, and still chairs, the Spirit of 1848 Caucus of the American Public Health Association, which focuses on links between social justice and public health.

We record as many videos as possible. You can see previous events here.
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture: Teresa Seeman: Aging Trajectories Through Biopsychosocial Lens
2021-04-30 12:00 - 13:00
The J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture will be held on April 30, 2020.
Teresa Seeman, PhD, will present “Aging Trajectories Through Biopsychosocial Lens.” Seeman is Professor of Epidemiology at the Fielding School of Public Health and of Medicine in the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Trained as an epidemiologist, with post-doctoral training in neuroendocrinology, her research interests are inter-disciplinary, focusing on role of social and psychological factors in health and aging, with particular interest in elucidating the biological pathways through which such factors impact on health.
Working in both community- and laboratory-based contexts, her work has documented the widespread health effects of protective social factors (e.g., social relationships) and psychological characteristics (e.g., control beliefs, perceptions of self-efficacy), including effects on risks for physical and cognitive decline as well as overall longevity. Her research has also contributed to our understanding of how these social and psychological influences are mediated through multiple major biological regulatory systems. She has been a leader in empirical research on a multi-systems view of biological risk – allostatic load.
Her work has shown that levels of allostatic load predict subsequent health outcomes, and that differences in allostatic load are related to social factors, including levels of social integration and support as well as more traditional measures of socio-economic status [SES]: higher allostatic load seen among those reporting less social integration and/or support and lower SES. Her current research is focused on developing more integrated models that incorporate consideration of life-course experiences with stressful and protective conditions and the cumulative impacts of these experiences on major biological regulatory systems that determine trajectories of health and longevity.
Abstract:
The presentation will examine evidence linking socio-economic and socio-emotional life-histories to trajectories of aging with explicit attention to the multiple biological pathways involved in these relationships. Taking a life-course perspective, illustrative examples of the patterning of these relationships across the life-course will be reviewed. Evidence of later-life plasticity of psychosocial and biological influences will be highlighted, illustrating the potential for health promotion via psychosocial interventions even at later ages.
About the annual J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture Series: Dick Udry’s research was highly innovative and interdisciplinary—features that he embedded in the Carolina Population Center’s practices and culture as its Director. In recognition of his enduring contributions, CPC named its distinguished lecture series in his honor. Previous presenters have included Dr. Lisa Berkman, the Director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, the Director of Harvard’s PhD program in Population Health Sciences, and the Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Epidemiology, and Global Health and Population (2019); Dr. Douglas Massey, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University (2018) and Dr. John Bongaarts, Vice President and Distinguished Scholar of the Population Council (2017).
This event will be held on Zoom. You can register here. We will post a recording after the talk. You can see previous events here.

Mark Hayward: Understanding Recent Trends in Dementia Prevalence for Older Black and White Americans
2021-09-10 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On September 10, 2021, Mark Hayward, Professor of Sociology and the director of the Population Health Initiative at the University of Texas at Austin, will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Hayward also serves as the Training Director of the Population Research Center. He recently served as the the president of the Southern Demographic Association, chair of the Aging and Life Course section of the American Sociological Association, and is the chair of the Sociology of Population section of the ASA. He has served on the boards of the Population Association of America and the Society of Biodemography and Social Biology, and he was a member and then chair of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research council. Currently, he is a member of the Committee on Population, National Academy of Sciences, and the Board of Scientific Counselors at the National Center for Health Statistics. He recently served on the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health and Society Scholars Program. Hayward received his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University in 1981.
His primary research addresses how life course exposures and events influence the morbidity and mortality experiences of the adult population. Recent studies have clarified how early life conditions influence socioeconomic, race and gender disparities in adult morbidity and mortality; the demography of race/ethnic and gender disparities in healthy life expectancy; social inequality in the biomarkers of aging, and the health consequences of marriage, divorce, and widowhood. Most recently, he has been investigating the fundamental inequalities in adult mortality in the United States arising from educational experience, differences in these associations by race and gender, and trends in inequality in mortality. Currently, he is part of a national scientific team examining the role of federal and state policies shaping the growing inequality in life chances in the US adult population. His research on these topics has been by the National Institute on Aging and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development. His recently published work has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Demography, the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, and Social Science and Medicine.
Abstract
Objectives: Today’s talk is motivated by recent evidence that dementia prevalence has been declining in the United States. Less clear, however, is whether important sociodemographic groups diverged or perhaps contributed in different ways to the overall national trend. For example, is the downward trend in dementia prevalence evident across the age range (young old compared to the oldest old)? Do Blacks and Whites both experience downward trends in dementia prevalence? Have changes in educational attainment, as well as other changes in modifiable risk factors for dementia (such as changes in poor childhood circumstances, health behaviors, and health conditions), had widespread consequences across major race–age groups
Methods: The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is used to assess dementia prevalence changes for non-Hispanic Blacks and Whites between 2000-2014 for community dwelling and nursing home residents aged 65 years and older. Cognitive status has been validated using clinical diagnoses and survey scores of a subsample of HRS respondents. The analysis of the dementia prevalence trends is based on logistic regression models predicting the log odds of having dementia as a function of a time-trend variable and a set of relevant covariates.
Results: Consistent with other studies, we found significant declines in dementia for Blacks and Whites across the 2000-2014 period. Nonetheless, these declines were not uniform across age and race groups. Blacks aged 65–74 years had the steepest decline in this period. We also found that improved educational attainment in the population was fundamentally important in understanding declining dementia prevalence in the United States.
Discussion: This study shows the importance of improvement in educational attainment in the early part of the twentieth century to understand the downward trend in dementia prevalence in the United States from 2000 to 2014. The downward trend was unrelated to dementia risk
factors such as controlled hypertension, changes in health behaviors, or changes in early life conditions. This finding has implications not only for understanding current trends in the United States, but also the potential role of the growth in cognitive ability and functioning in other countries that underwent similar rapid expansions in schooling.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Will Dow: Female Sex Workers in the Time of COVID: A Longitudinal Study in Tanzania
2021-10-29 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On October 29, 2021, Will Dow, the Director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health, will present “Female Sex Workers in the Time of COVID: A Longitudinal Study in Tanzania” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Dow, a celebrated scholar of the economic aspects of health insurance, health behaviors, and health and demographic outcomes, joined the Berkeley faculty in 2004. Since 2005, he has been the founding associate director of the Berkeley Population Center and, since 2013, the director of the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging. He has also served at the School as division head of Health Policy and Management and as the associate dean for research, and in 2018-19 served as Interim Dean of the School of Public Health. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and previously served as Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Dow’s research contributes to improvements in health policy and healthy aging among vulnerable populations locally and globally. He has led teams analyzing California’s pathbreaking health insurance reforms and paid leave policies, as well as teams designing innovative behavioral economic strategies for preventing HIV and promoting behavior change such as smoking cessation. His global work includes serving as principal investigator of the premier team studying determinants of Costa Rican’s exceptional longevity, as well as projects in Cuba, Mexico, Tanzania and Japan.

Title and abstract of lecture will be available soon.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Julie Bynum: Accelerating population research and its impact to reduce Burden of Alzheimer’s disease
2021-11-05 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On November 5, 2021, Julie Bynum, the Margaret Terpenning Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology, Geriatric Center Associate Director for Health Policy and Research, and a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan, will present “Accelerating population research and its impact to reduce Burden of Alzheimer’s disease” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Bynum is the Margaret Terpenning Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Research Professor in the Institute of Gerontology, Geriatric Center Associate Director for Health Policy and Research, and a member of the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. She received her medical and public health degrees from Johns Hopkins, did her residency and chief residency at Dartmouth, and completed specialty training in Geriatric Medicine at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Bynum then joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School. She received prestigious awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Physician Faculty Scholar Program and the National Institute of Aging Beeson Scholar Program. She has been an Atlantic Philanthropies Health & Aging Policy Fellow, was a member of the National Academy of Medicine Committee that published “Vital Signs: Core Metrics for Health and Health Care Progress” and was recently a Deputy Editor of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Medicine Forum on Aging, Disability and Independence.
Dr. Bynum joined the University of Michigan in 2018 and was recently chosen to succeed Dr. Dick Simon as Vice Chair for Faculty Affairs for the Department of Internal Medicine. She currently leads a robust portfolio of research, has taken on a diverse group of junior faculty mentees across the instructional, clinical and research tracks, and provides primary and consultative care to older adults. Dr. Bynum is well known for leading interdisciplinary research teams to study questions about the complex drivers of quality and costs for older adults and how to improve health care policy and performance using national administrative data.
Title and abstract of lecture will be available soon.
We record as many seminars as possible. You can see previous events here.

Aalyia Sadruddin: Death Matters: Notes on Aging and Time in Rwanda
2022-02-18 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 18, 2022, Aalyia Sadruddin, Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will present “Death Matters: Notes on Aging and Time in Rwanda” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
About Aalyia Sadruddin:
I am a cultural and medical anthropologist who writes and teaches on issues related to aging, care, and political culture in postconflict societies. Over the last decade, I have carried out ethnographic research in Rwanda with elderly women and men who witnessed multiple episodes of political and ethnic conflict between the late 1950s and early 1990s. Specifically, I trace how members of this generation navigate fundamental aspects of everyday life—such as dealing with the passage of time, providing bodily care, and preparing for death—in order to think through the complex meanings of the ordinary.
Prior to joining the Department of Anthropology at UNC Chapel Hill, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute of International & Public Affairs at Brown University.

CANCELED: Rob Warren: CPC and the Future of Population Research
2022-02-21 15:30 - 17:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On February 21, 2022, Rob Warren, Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and the director of the Minnesota Population Center, will present “CPC and the Future of Population Research” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2021-2022 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
About Rob Warren:

I am a sociologist, demographer, population health scholar, and education policy researcher with experience and expertise in the collection, production, and dissemination of large-scale data products for research on health, aging, education, and labor force outcomes through my NIH- and NSF-funded work on High School and Beyond (HSB), the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), the 1940 U.S. Census, and the IPUMS version of the Current Population Surveys (IPUMS-CPS). I am involved in the construction of the new 100% count historical Census data sets for IPUMS, and I have two ongoing NIH-funded projects to link early 20th century U.S. Census data to (1) several modern surveys of older Americans, including the HRS, PSID, and WLS and (2) recent mortality records from the Social Security Administration.
I am currently Co-Director, with Theresa Osypuk, of the NICHD-funded Training Program in Population Health Science (T32HD095134).
With Chandra Muller, Eric Grodsky, and Jennifer Manly I am conducting follow-up surveys of the High School and Beyond cohort (with support from 1R01AG058719-01A1). These ~25,500 people were first interviewed in high school in 1980. HS&B data – including a 2021-2022 follow-up focused on the early-life predictors of cognitive impairment – provide leverage in understanding the roles of education, skills, and childhood social circumstances in shaping work, health, and cognitive well-being at midlife.

Shaping an integrated response at the intersection of mental health, substance use, and HIV within the IeDEA consortium
2022-04-01 12:30 - 14:00
Kathryn Lancaster, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor in Epidemiology
College of Public Health, The Ohio State University
Angela Parcesepe, PhD, MPH, MSW
Assistant Professor, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The International Epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) consortium was established by the NIH in 2006 to provide a rich resource for globally diverse HIV data to address HIV-related research questions that were not possible to answer with currently existing individual cohorts. The IeDEA consortium collects observational data representing over 2.2 million people living with and at risk for HIV contributed by clinical centers and research groups across 44 countries and 7 geographic regions.
In this talk, we will discuss the IeDEA’s consortium research at the intersection of mental health, substance use, and HIV treatment. Mental health and substance use disorders are among the most common comorbidities among people with HIV globally and have been associated with poor quality of life and HIV care continuum outcomes including delayed HIV diagnosis, suboptimal ART adherence, and virologic failure.
This talk will focus on mental health and substance use research priorities related to the implementation and scale up of ‘Treat All’ policies throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the integration of mental health and substance use services at HIV clinics throughout the IeDEA consortium, regional research examining the intersection of depression, heavy episodic drinking, and HIV disclosure among people with HIV in IeDEA Cameroon, and the recent launch of longitudinal cohorts of aging people with HIV (the IeDEA Sentinel Research Network) and adolescents and young adults with HIV (AYANI) in IeDEA. Finally, we will discuss future directions for research at the intersection of mental health, substance use, and HIV treatment in the IeDEA consortium and beyond.
Email darcommunications@nih.gov for passcode

Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri: Social determinants of cognitive aging & inequalities: Challenges and Opportunities
2022-11-04 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On November 4, 2022, Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri (Epidemiology) will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.

Bio: Dr. Zeki Al Hazzouri is an epidemiologist and the overarching goal of her research program is to improve the understanding of how social and cardiovascular factors experienced across the life-course influence cognitive function, Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s related dementias (AD/ADRD). An important theme of her work focuses on poverty and financial well-being as social determinants of cognitive aging. Another theme of her work also focuses on causal inference methodologies that address challenges in ADRD research including, inverse probability weighting, trial emulation, and regression discontinuity designs. Her work leverages innovative methods such as pooling, cross-walking and harmonization of existing epidemiological cohorts to address life course ADRD research questions.

Sarah Burgard: Remembrance of things past? Measuring life course exposures as determinants of health
2023-04-21 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
On April 21, 2022, Sarah Burgard will present “Remembrance of things past? Measuring life course exposures as determinants of health” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Bio: I am a professor of Sociology and by courtesy, of Epidemiology and Public Policy. I am also a Research Professor in the Population Studies Center and Research Affiliate in the Survey Research Center, both at the Institute for Social Research, and am the incoming director of the Population Studies Center. I have a publication record in social and health science journals in the areas of the life course determinants of health and wellbeing in later life and related health disparities, and have received funding for my research and for data collection in these areas from NIH and private foundations. I am currently an affiliate and Advisory Panel member for the Michigan Center for the Demography of Aging (MICDA), a Technical Review Committee member of the National Longitudinal Studies program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a former member on the Population Association Board of Directors. I also led implementation of the Institute for Social Research Strategic plan for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for three years.
I conduct research on the social stratification of aging and health with population-based survey data, and have published extensively on the social factors underlying health disparities by socioeconomic status, gender, and race/ethnicity across the life course. I have focused particularly on the links between employment and health in later life, including mental health, chronic disease and overall health status, and health behaviors. Some of my recent research and funding has centered on understanding these questions in the context of economic recessions, which disrupt career, economic, and health paths for many adults, but especially for socioeconomically-marginalized groups. I am PI of the 2020 Americans’ Changing Lives Study ACLLIFE wave, which will collect full retrospective life histories including extensive information about life events from a cohort now in their late 50s, and a PI of the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study, a panel survey of adults in Southeast Michigan that has been tracking the life events and mental health of these individuals in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Using these data, I have published on the influences of job loss, financial shocks, debt, housing instability, and material hardship, with a focus on creating life course measures of cumulative disadvantage for which retrospective or prospective life history data are essential.

Molly Rosenberg: Cash transfers to promote healthy aging in low-income settings: Triangulating evidence from rural South Africa
2023-09-22 12:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Molly Rosenberg (Indiana) will present “Cash transfers to promote healthy aging in low-income settings: Triangulating evidence from rural South Africa” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Rosenberg is an epidemiologist and population health researcher who studies how social, structural, and economic factors influence health across the lifecourse. In her primary research line, Dr. Rosenberg examines how poverty alleviation interventions can influence health, and represents vulnerable populations in low-resource settings across the globe. Representative projects examine the impact of cash transfers on cognitive aging in rural South Africa (NIA R01AG069128, MPIs: Rosenberg and Kobayashi), the potential for microfinance to be used to promote natural disaster resilience in Haiti, and the association between an income generation program and healthcare utilization in Kenya. Trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist, Dr. Rosenberg also maintains research lines in the epidemiology of HIV and SARS-CoV-2.

Jason M Fletcher: Early Life Context and Old Age Mortality: Extending Barker
2023-09-29 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Jason M Fletcher will present “Early Life Context and Old Age Mortality: Extending Barker” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
A specialist in health economics, economics of education, social genomics, and child and adolescent health policy, Professor Fletcher focuses his research on examining social network effects on adolescent education and health outcomes, combining genetics and social science research, estimating long-term consequences of childhood mental illness, and examining how in utero and early life conditions affect later life health, cognition, and mortality. He is an affiliate of the Center for Demography and Ecology, Institute for Research on Poverty, and Center for Demography on Health and Aging at the University and a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Group at the University of Chicago.
He earned a B.S. in economics and public administration from the University of Tennessee–Knoxville (Summa Cum Laude) and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in Applied Economics. From 2010-2012, he was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University. In 2012 he was selected for a career development award by the William T. Grant Foundation. That award is funding a study of the interplay between genetics and social settings in youth development.
Professor Fletcher’s recent articles have appeared in the Review of Economics and Statistics, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Health Economics, and Demography. His book (with Dalton Conley)—The Genome Factor: What the Social Genomics Revolution Reveals About Ourselves, Our History and Our Future—was published by Princeton University Press.

Jeremy Moulton: Demographics and Housing: Lessons from Big Data
2023-10-13 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Faculty Fellow Jeremy Moulton will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Moulton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy at UNC. He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of California-Davis in 2011. Dr. Moulton is an applied microeconomist with research interests in aging, intergenerational transfers, housing, labor, self-employment, and health. Much of his work has used ‘natural experiments’ such as changes in program eligibility rules or policies to identify causal effects of demographic, health and labor outcomes. For instance, he has investigated the Earned Income Tax Credit, Social Security, Medicare Part-D, property tax exemptions, and the World War II G.I. Bill, using several different empirical methods: difference in differences, fixed effects, and regression discontinuity. Much of his research is focused on better understanding public policy’s impact on older populations and how these policies affect their family and household members.

Kris Marsh
2023-11-03 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Kris Marsh will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Kris Marsh received her PhD from the University of Southern California in 2005. She was a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina before joining the faculty of Maryland where she has been tenured since 2014.
Dr. Marsh’s general areas of expertise are the Black middle class, demography, racial residential segregation, and education. She has combined these interests to develop a research agenda that is divided into two broad areas: avenues into the Black middle class and consequences of being in the Black middle class.
Currently, Dr. Marsh is writing a book for Cambridge University Press that examines the mental and physical health, wealth, residential choices and dating practices of an emerging Black middle class that is single and living alone. Dr. Marsh is also in the beginning stages of a book exploring the perceptions and motivations of Black middle-class golfers.
Professor Marsh also teaches courses on Research Methods, Race Relations and Racial Residential Segregation. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and the University of Johannesburg.
Dr. Marsh has served as a contributor to CNN in America, the Associated Press, NBC Washington, and Al Jazeera America and is frequently asked to contribute to the Washington Post. She served as the Secretary of the District of Columbia Sociological Society and the Managing Editor of Issues in Race & Society. Dr. Marsh was awarded the Jacquelyn Johnson Jackson Early Career Award from the Association of Black Sociologists in 2015 and received the Core Fulbright U.S. Scholar award for 2017. Dr. Marsh was elected Chair of the Section on Race, Gender and Class of the American Sociological Association in 2019.
Professor Marsh’s most recent research and intellectual endeavors center on improving police- community relations. Since late 2015, Dr. Marsh has been the driving force behind a bias free training and research collaboration between Prince George’s County Police Department and the University of Maryland. Dr. Marsh was appointed to the Prince George’s County Police Reform Task Force in 2020 and is the Chair of the subcommittee on recruiting, hiring, training, promotions & evaluations, human resource and mental health. Dr. Marsh also serves on the President’s University of Maryland Task Force on Community Policing.

Kristen A Lindquist, The Physiological Hypothesis of Emotional Aging
2023-11-17 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Kristen Lindquist will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Kristen Lindquist, PhD. is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research seeks to understand the psychological and neural basis of emotions, moods, and feelings. Her on-going work uses tools from social cognition, physiology, neuroscience, and big data methods to examine how emotions emerge from the confluence of the body, brain, and culture.

Yan Zhang: Number of Children and Older Adults' Cognitive Function in the U.S., UK, and China
2024-01-19 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Yan Zhang will present “Number of Children and Older Adults’ Cognitive Function in the U.S., UK, and China” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
“I am an assistant professor at East Carolina University, Department of Sociology. I was a postdoc research scientist at Center for Demography of Health and Aging, University of Wisconsin-Madison, before joining ECU. My research agenda focuses on family demography, population health, aging & life course, and gender & sexuality. I am particularly interested in examining how family relationships influence health outcomes among aging population. My current research investigates the association between parenthood (i.e., parental status, parent-child relationship, and fertility history) and older adults’ risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.
Some of my work has been published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontologist, Social Science & Medicine, SSM-Population Health, Annals of Epidemiology, Chinese Sociological Review, among other outlets (; ; )
I earned a B.A. in sociology at China Agricultural University, a M.A. in sociology at University at Buffalo, and a Ph.D. at Michigan State University.”

Ganga Bey:Characterizing Pathways from Social Stressors to Cognitive Health Disparities: Theory and Emerging Evidence
2024-02-16 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Ganga Bey will present “Characterizing Pathways from Social Stressors to Cognitive Health Disparities: Theory and Emerging Evidence” as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Ganga Bey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology within the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She studies how people’s beliefs about identity, worth, and ability affect their stress, aging, and susceptibility to disease.

Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez: Associations between accelerating aging and life expectancy
2024-03-22 12:00 - 13:00 | Carolina Square Room 2002, 123 W. Franklin St, Chapel Hill, NC, 27516
Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez will present as part of the Carolina Population Center’s 2023-2024 Interdisciplinary Research Seminar Series.
Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez’s research focuses on the demography of health and aging. He has written on health patterns and trends in low- and middle-income countries; on aging in high-income countries including issues about compression of morbidity; on the links between early life experiences and late life outcomes; as well as on biomarker data from Mexico to study physiological patterns of health and their link with sociodemographic factors. Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez is also Associate Director of the UCLA California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and co-director of the T32 training grant at CCPR.
With Prof Alberto Palloni (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Dr. Guido Pinto Aguirre, Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez co-founded the Latin American Mortality Database, the largest data repository of mortality from 19 countries in Latin America (including data from around 1850). He has collaborated with researchers and institutions in México, Brazil, Germany, and Sweden.
He received the 2018 Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. This award is given biennially in even years to scholars who have made distinguished contributions to population research during the first ten years after receipt of the Ph.D.

Udry Lecture: Jennifer Manly: Social and Structural Drivers of Cognitive Aging and Dementia
2024-04-11 15:00 - 17:00
The 2024 J. Richard Udry Distinguished Lecture will be presented by Jennifer Manly, a Professor of Neuropsychology in Neurology at the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center and the Taub Institute for Research in Aging and Alzheimer’s disease at Columbia University.
Her research focuses on mechanisms of inequalities in cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her research team has partnered with the Black and Latinx communities in New York City and around the United States to design and carry out investigations of structural and social forces across the lifecourse, such as educational opportunities, discrimination, and socioeconomic inequality, and how these factors relate to cognition and brain health later in life. She is the MPI of the Columbia Interdisciplinary Research Center on Alzheimer’s Disparities which focuses on mentoring early career scientists from minoritized backgrounds.
Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Alzheimer’s Association, and she has authored over 220 peer-reviewed publications and 10 chapters. She was the 2014 recipient of the Tony Wong Diversity Award for Outstanding Mentorship, was the recipient of the Paul Satz-International Neuropsychological Society Career Mentoring Award in 2020, and was named the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research Senior Mentor of the Year in 2022. Dr. Manly was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021. She served on the HHS Advisory Council on Alzheimer’s Research, Care and Services from 2011 – 2015 and is a current member of the National Advisory Council on Aging.
