Links Between Health and Social and Economic Productivity

The factors that contribute to well-being are complex, dynamic, and inter-connected, reflecting experiences and decisions from the past as well as the present, and the embedding of individuals in household, family, and social structures. CPC faculty fellows collect and analyze longitudinal data because it provides information on experiences, time-use, relationships, and health status at multiple points over the life course, which can be harnessed to better understand the co-evolution of well-being and health, particularly at later stages of life.

Associated Projects

Project	Principal Investigator	Description	Tags	Countries
Add Health Epigenome Resource: Life course stressors and epigenomic modifications in adulthood	Kathleen Mullan Harris	The overall goals of this project are to investigate the influence of life course psychosocial stressors on DNA methylation and gene expression that may influence cardiometabolic health and depression in a US representative study of young adults.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Add Health GWAS Data: User Support and Research Tools to Enable Widespread Access	Kathleen Mullan Harris	This project is developing tools to enable widespread access to and use of genome-wide association study (GWAS) data among respondents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health).	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course	United States of America
Add Health Parent Study: Phase I	Kathleen Mullan Harris	The Add Health Parent Study (2015-2017), gathered social, behavioral, and health survey data in 2015-2017 on a probability sample of the Add Health parents who were originally interviewed in 1995.	Demography, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Black-White Differences in Life Course Exposure to Death: Consequences for Health	Robert Hummer	The first population-based analysis of race/ethnic differences in exposure to the death of multiple family members over the life course.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Carolina Center for Population Aging and Health	Elizabeth Frankenberg	Research produced as part of this center will provide important new results on patterns and determinants of healthy aging around the world.		Indonesia, China, Sri Lanka, India, Malawi, Philippines, United States of America
Cash Transfer and Intimate Partner Violence (CT & IPV) Research Collaborative	Clare Barrington	Advancing the research agenda linking cash transfers and IPV—defining and contributing evidence to knowledge gaps, bringing coherence to future research plans, and disseminating research findings—in order to effectively leverage cash programming for IPV prevention among poor and vulnerable women in low- and middle-income settings.
Cash Transfers for Adolescent Girls and young Women to Reduce Sexual Risk in Tanzania: A Qualitative and Behavioral Economics Assessment of the CARE Study	Audrey E. Pettifor	Examining the experiences of adolescent girls and young women who were part of the CARE Study.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United Republic of Tanzania
Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey	Linda S. Adair	A longitudinal study following new mothers and their infants over 30+ years of life course development.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Philippines
Center for Population and Aging	Kathleen Mullan Harris	Linked data from the Add Health Parent study (AHPS) and Add Health study will support a broad-based research agenda on intergenerational linkages over the life course of each generation.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS)	Barry M. Popkin; Penny Gordon-Larsen	CHNS examines how the social and economic development of Chinese society is affecting the health of its population.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	China
Data for Impact (D4I)	Sian L. Curtis	We strengthen the technical and organizational capacity of local partners to collect, analyze, and use data to support their move to self-reliance.	Data Science, Interventions and Evaluation, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Bangladesh, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe
Developing and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Pictorial Health Warnings on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages to Overcome Language and Literacy Barriers	Marissa Hall; Lindsey Smith Taillie	Our proposed project aims to design and evaluate pictorial health warnings on SSBs, with a long-term goal of informing policies that can improve diet, prevent obesity, and ultimately prevent type 2 diabetes and other cardiometabolic diseases among Latino children.		United States of America
Drivers and Consequences of Climate-Induced Migration in Africa	Clark Gray	This project will provide new insight into climate-induced migration in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on how this process varies over space and how destination areas are affected.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Dynamics of Extreme Events, People, and Places (DEEPP)	Elizabeth Frankenberg	Understanding the environmental, economic, social, and psychological impacts of hurricanes and flooding in coastal Carolina communities.	Human-Environment Interactions	United States of America
Early Life Mortality in the United States	Robert Hummer	This project seeks to better understand early life mortality (ages 0-24) in the United States in the context of substantial racial/ethnic inequality and very rapid socioeconomic and family changes that have occurred in recent decades.	Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Energy Transitions and Environmental Change in East and Southern Africa's Coupled Human, Terrestrial, and Atmospheric Systems.	Jason West	The East and Southern Africa region is experiencing unprecedented environmental change (citations), with untold consequences for human well-being and sustainability.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches
Evolution of Well-Being among Older Adults	Elizabeth Frankenberg	Looking at longer-term consequences of large-scale disasters on the health and well-being of older adults.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Indonesia
Exome Variants Underlying Weight Gain from Adolescence to Adulthood	Penny Gordon-Larsen	The objective of the research is to investigate how genetic variants influence temporal changes in body mass index and downstream cardiometabolic risk factors at a vulnerable lifecycle period for weight gain, with differential risk across race/ethnic groups. Our findings will contribute to the understanding of risk in the transition from adolescence into adulthood, a period of rapid weight gain when precursors of adult disease are developing, in order to inform efforts to mitigate early development of disease risk.	Biomarkers, Biostatistics, Data Science, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Extreme Events as Transformative Factors in Pastoral Social-Ecological Systems	Paul W. Leslie	This research focuses on the response of Maasai communities in northern Tanzania to the devastating drought of 2008-2009.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches	United Republic of Tanzania
From Biological to Social Processes: Interdisciplinary Training in Life Course Research	Robert Hummer; Allison Aiello	A scientific training program for both predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees which integrates both social and biological/health sciences research approaches for improving the understanding of health and well-being across the life course.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	North Carolina, United States of America
Geography of Health Inequalities: Contextual Data Merge for Wave V of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health	Taylor Hargrove	Summarizing the demographic, socioeconomic, health, and mobility characteristics of the environments in which participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) were living at the time of their Wave V interviews		United States of America
Global Food Research Program	Barry M. Popkin	We provide the academic community, policymakers, and the food industry with rigorous and innovative methods to measure the factory-to-fork dynamics and trends in the food supply in various countries across the globe.	Interventions and Evaluation, Multi-level Approaches	Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, South Africa
Health and Poverty Effects of a Large-scale Cookstove Initiative in Rwanda	Sudhanshu (Ashu) Handa	This project will evaluate the impact of a private sector cookstove and fuel distribution intervention on exposure to airborne pollutants, health and poverty.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches	Rwanda
Health Disparities: Inflammatory Response, Immune Function, and Environmental(In)Congruence	Taylor Hargrove	Examining the biological and social mechanisms underlying the relationship between socioeconomic mobility and poorer physiological health outcomes.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Impact of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer on Beneficiaries' Vulnerabilities Throughout the Life Cycle	Clare Barrington	Identfying vulnerable sub-groups receiving unconditional cash transfers in Malawi, and identifying ways in which the Social Cash Transfer Programme can enhance its positive effect on their well-being.	Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Malawi
Impacts of Environment, Host Genetics and Antigen Diversity on Malaria Vaccine Efficacy	Michael E. Emch	This multi-site study in Africa is the first major attempt at understanding the impact of spatial ecology on malaria vaccine efficacy and the first integration of molecular data into an ecological vaccine trial analysis.	Biomarkers, Multi-level Approaches
LAMHA - Latino Adolescent Migration, Health and Adaptation Project	Krista M. Perreira	Examining the mental health status and needs of recent Latino immigrant youth and their primary caretakers in North Carolina.	Race/Gender/Age/SES	North Carolina, United States of America
Leveraging multi-omics approaches to examine metabolic challenges of obesity in relation to cardiovascular diseases	Penny Gordon-Larsen	Using genomics and metabolomics data to reveal mechanisms important in cardiovascular disease (CVD), with strong potential for identifying biomarkers of CVD risk.	Biomarkers	United States of America
Life Course Process of Alzheimer's Disease: Sex Difference and Biosocial Mechanisms	Y. Claire Yang	Examining the process of age change in cognitive function in relation to risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) throughout the adult life span and how such process is different for men and women.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Life Course Studies	Glen H. Elder, Jr.	The five key principles of life course theory: life-span development, human agency, historical time and geographic place, timing of transitions, and linked lives.	Longitudinal/Life-Course
Longer Term Effects of a Natural Disaster on Health and Socio-Economic Status	Elizabeth Frankenberg	This project will collect and analyze data from Sumatra, Indonesia, on how children and prime-age adults are affected by and respond to a large-scale natural disaster, the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, which killed an estimated 160,000. The Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) is a longitudinal survey of individuals, households, communities, and facilities in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, Indonesia.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Indonesia
MEASURE Evaluation	James Thomas	MEASURE Evaluation’s mission is to contribute to better health for people living in low-income countries by assisting governments and health institutions to generate and use information to change what doesn’t work and to scale up what does.	Data Science, Interventions and Evaluation, Multi-level Approaches	Angola, Armenia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Burundi, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, Eastern Caribbean, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Republic of Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine, Viet Nam, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Measurement, Learning and Evaluation (MLE) the BMGF Family Planning Country Action Portfolio	Sian L. Curtis	The Urban Reproductive Health Initiative links country-level consortia with evaluation experts on the Measurement, Learning & Evaluation (MLE) Project who will identify the most effective country-level approaches, facilitate knowledge sharing, and build a robust evidence base to shape future urban family planning, reproductive health, and integrated maternal and newborn health programs.	Interventions and Evaluation
Monitoring Social Change: Health, Reproduction, Aging	Barry M. Popkin	Adding a follow-up survey to collect and analyze biomarker data from participants in the China Health Nutrition Study.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	China
Multilevel mechanisms of HIV acquisition in young South African women	Audrey E. Pettifor	Identifying social determinants and their pathways of effect that shape HIV risk among young women in sub-Saharan Africa, a population that bears an enormous burden of disease.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	South Africa
Nang Rong Projects	Stephen J. Walsh; Ronald R. Rindfuss; Barbara Entwisle	A team collected information from more than 50,000 individuals as well as from administrative records, meteorological data, satellite images, and many other sources over a span of 20 years in the Nang Rong district in northeast Thailand.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Thailand
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health	Kathleen Mullan Harris	The Add Health Wave V Program Project will add new data to the existing longitudinal multilevel social, behavioral, biological, and genetic data to create an unparalleled scientific resource for investigating the developmental origins of health and disease.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Network on Life Course Dynamics and Disparities in 21st Century America	Robert Hummer	A research network investigating how and why the United States is increasingly falling behind virtually all comparably developed/wealthy nations		United States of America
Nutrition Transition Program	Barry M. Popkin	A set of research projects that study the rapid increases in inactivity and obesity, and the associated rise in noncommunicable diseases, that have occurred along with other rapid social and economic changes in the developing world.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
ONEdata - Obesity & Neighborhood Environment Database	Penny Gordon-Larsen	The Obesity and Neighborhood Environment database is a unique collection of variables derived using spatial analysis techniques within a large scale Geographic Information System (GIS) that links community-level data to individual Add Health respondent residential locations in both space and time.	Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches
Policy Options to Improve Educational Impact of the Malawi SCTP	Clare Barrington	Investigating why school-aged children in Malawi continue to drop out of school at high rates, despite households in Malawi receiving an unconditional school bonus for school-aged children.		Malawi
Program and Policy Options for Preventing Obesity in the Low, Middle, and Transitional Income Countries: background research and program evaluation	Barry M. Popkin; Lindsey Smith Taillie; Shu Wen Ng	We are looking at taxation, advertising restrictions, and front-of-package labels, and their effects on food purchases and dietary intake in four countries -- South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, and Colombia.	Interventions and Evaluation	Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, Barbados, Jamaica
Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey of HSE (RLMS-HSE)	Barry M. Popkin	The RLMS is a household-based longitudinal survey designed to measure the effects of Russian reforms on the economic well-being of households and individuals.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Russian Federation
Service Delivery Factors Influencing Contraceptive Use Dynamics in Developing Countries: A Mixed-Methods and Cross-Disciplinary Approach	Kat Tumlinson	Results of this project will redefine traditional approaches to assessing the quality of family planning service delivery in developing countries and quantify the impact of service quality on contraceptive continuation.	Multi-level Approaches	Kenya
SES and race-ethnic disparities in food purchasing and dietary intake:2000-2015	Barry M. Popkin	Our primary goals are to examine how various socio-economic factors (including the Great Recession, price changes) affect short-term and long-term food purchases and dietary outcomes across and within critical race/ethnic and SES subpopulations.	Race/Gender/Age/SES
Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health Across the Life Course	Carolyn Tucker Halpern	Exploring how sexual orientation/gender identity and socioeconomic status intersect and contribute to health and disease across the life course.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Social Context, the Life Course, and Genetic Transcription in Add Health	Kathleen Mullan Harris	The collection and dissemination of genome-wide mRNA expression profiles among Add Health respondents.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	United States of America
Socioeconomic and Racial Gaps in Schools: Implications for Health and Employment	Kathleen Mullan Harris	For lower SES and racial minority children, school experiences are often characterized by inequalities in which they are disadvantaged relative to higher SES and White children.	Multi-level Approaches	United States of America
Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery	Elizabeth Frankenberg	The Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR) provides data and analyses regarding the long-term impact of exposure to an extreme event, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, on population health and well-being.	Biomarkers, Data Science, Demography, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Race/Gender/Age/SES	Indonesia
Supporting Evidence-based Policy Making in sub-Saharan Africa through the Transfer Project	Gustavo Angeles	A multi-country cash transfer research initiative to find out if and how cash transfers impact other aspects of people's lives.	Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
TB Data, Impact Assessment and Communications Hub (TB DIAH)	James Thomas	TB DIAH works to improve and harness existing data on tuberculosis (TB) and expand knowledge sharing regarding TB worldwide.
The effect of poverty, stress and immune function on health across the life-course	Sudhanshu (Ashu) Handa	This project assess the medium term impact of a large-scale national anti-poverty program on disease and health risk of young adults age (19-25) and their parents or caregivers (age 55-65).		Malawi, Kenya
Transfer Project	Sudhanshu (Ashu) Handa	The Transfer Project is a multi-country cash transfer research initiative.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Transition to a Western diet and cardiometabolic risk: Biomarkers derived from the microbiome	Penny Gordon-Larsen	This project investigates how long-term and short-term changes in diet, gut microbiota, gut microbiota-related plasma metabolites and microbiota-influenced markers of cardiometabolic disease interrelate in order to inform efforts to mitigate early development of disease risk across the globe.	Biomarkers, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES	China
Understanding and Addressing the Multilevel Influences on Uptake and Adherence to HIV Prevention Strategies among Adolescent Girls and Young Women in SubSaharan Africa	Ilene S. Speizer	We propose a 5-year clustered randomized trial with a factorial design to evaluate the efficacy of a multi-level intervention that addresses stigma in accessing health care; social support and individual-risk behaviors.	Biomarkers, Interventions and Evaluation, Longitudinal/Life-Course, Multi-level Approaches, Race/Gender/Age/SES
Understanding the risk profile of young women's male partners in rural South Africa.	Audrey E. Pettifor	Assessing the empirical data on the male partners of young women in sub-Saharan African who are at very high risk of HIV infection.		South Africa