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News and Highlights from CPC affiliates in 2020

New Add Health data:

  • In August 2020, Add Health released the following datasets: Wave V Demographics – Home Exam, Wave V Glucose Homeostasis, Wave V Lipids, Wave V Renal Function, Wave V Inflammation and Immune Function, Wave V Biomarker Weight, Wave V Sample 2B, Wave V Constructed Age, and Wave IV Polygenic Scores – Release 2. These datasets are available for request through the CPC data portal.

Newly launched:

  • The DEEPP Project, led by Elizabeth Frankenberg, DEEPP brings together social and environmental scientists and engineers. Their broad goal is to understand the environmental, economic, social, and psychological impacts of hurricanes and flooding in coastal Carolina communities.
  • Carolyn Halpern and the Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health Across the Life Course study (SOGI-SES) research team launched their online survey in early September! The SOGI-SES team is thrilled to guide the first Add Health satellite project that surveys Add Health respondents directly. The study goal is to improve understanding of factors that contribute to health and economic inequalities that have been shown to disfavor sexual and gender minorities.

Funding updates:

  • CPC’s NICHD-funded P2C for population research infrastructure has been renewed for another five years. Funding from the P2C helps CPC provide professional services that support innovative interdisciplinary research that makes a major impact on the population sciences both through publications and on-going large-scale longitudinal data collection projects. The P2C support is critical for the infrastructure and research ecosystem that maintains faculty productivity.
  • We were awarded a five-year P30 grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to establish the Carolina Center for Population Aging and Health. The grant will support work on three thematic areas:  Aging in Diverse Contexts, Links between Health and Social and Economic Productivity, and Measurements and Methods. Thanks to Allison Aiello, Linda Adair, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Bob Hummer, Ted Mouw, and Tim Van Acker for hard work and helpful comments on the proposal.
  • Lisa Pearce was awarded an R21 research grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human (NICHD) for a project entitled “Understanding Family Networks and Implications for Maternal Health.” The study will pilot the use of social network methods to capture family dynamics and their associations with health during pregnancy, using electronic medical records to provide a sampling frame and health data.
  • Tonia Poteat and Krista M. Perreira have received an R01 from the National, Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) titled, “Cardiovascular Health of Sexual and Gender Minorities in the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (SGM HCHS/SOL).”
  • Barry Popkin and Penny Gordon-Larsen were awarded an R01 for “Monitoring Social Change: Health and Human Capital from Childhood to Adulthood” from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human (NICHD) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The objective of the proposed study is to collect an 11th round of China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data and identify life-stage-specific exposures that predict health and human capital.
  • Paul Delamater was awarded an K01 for “Understanding the relationship between herd immunity and geographic scale to improve estimates of localized infectious disease outbreak risk” from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and National Institutes of Health  (NIH).

Career Milestones:

  • Ther Aung was nominated as a national finalist on a USAID-ASEAN Science Prize for Women under the theme of “Preventative Health.”
  • Peggy Bentley has been inducted into the American Society for Nutrition’s (ASN) class of 2020 fellows, the highest honor ASN bestows.
  • Wei Chang won the 2019 IPUMS Research Award for student research in global health.
  • Nathan Dollar won a Graduate School Summer Research Fellowship.
  • Penny Gordon-Larsen is the recipient of the 2020 George A. Bray Founders Award for “for significant contributions that advance the scientific or clinical basis for understanding or treating obesity and for extensive involvement with The Obesity Society.”
  • Taylor Hargrove was newly elected to the board of IAPHS.
  • George Hayward won a Student Undergraduate Teaching Award that recognizes “demonstrated and consistent excellence in undergraduate teaching, creation of a dynamic intellectual environment, respect for intellectual diversity, and success in positively affecting a broad spectrum of students both in and outside the classroom.”
  • Bob Hummer received the 2020 IAPHS Mentoring Award. Read more about Bob and the other award winners. He also received the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award from Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy for his extraordinary accomplishments!
  • Lisa Pearce is being awarded the Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professorship in Research & Undergraduate Education for a term of four years beginning July 1, 2020. She also has two forthcoming books. The first, co-authored with Claire Chipman Gilliland, is entitled, Religion in America (2020, University of California Press). The second is co-authored with Glen Elder and Richard Settersten, entitled, Living on the Edge: An American Generation’s Journey through the 20th Century (2020, University of Chicago Press).
  • Barry Popkin is the recipient of the 2020 Thomas A. Wadden Award for Distinguished Mentorship which honors “honors a mid-career or senior TOS member for distinguished mentorship of the Obesity Society’s members who were in their early careers at the time of the mentoring relationship.”
  • Amanda Thompson was promoted to full professor.
  • Deshira Wallace was selected to receive the 2020 Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence (PARE).

Recent work and publications:

Over the past year, our affiliates have engaged in an array of projects addressing the pandemic and other pressing research questions about population dynamics, fertility, health, mortality, migration, and the environment.