Carolina Population Center

Yan Zhang: Number of Children and Older Adults' Cognitive Function in the U.S., UK, and China
2024-01-19 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | 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.
