Seminar Series

Progress on research to prevent or treat Alzheimer's disease and related causes of dementia (ADRD) has been disappointingly slow. The collection of diseases poses special difficulties for population research, including epidemiology.  The predominant causal inference methods in epidemiology are based on fulfilling the 'back-door criterion', i.e., accounting for shared causes of exposure and outcome, are ill-matched for many problems in ADRD. Novel insights or more convincing findings may be derived when using methods based on instrumental variables (IV), i.e., identifying sources of variation in exposures of interest that are unrelated to the potential outcomes of ADRD. One major challenge in applying IV methods has been the need for large sample sizes, but this barrier is ameliorated as large data sets become commonplace.  Another major challenge in applying IV methods is identifying plausible IVs, but because epidemiologists do not routinely use IV methods, they may not recognize potential IVs. I will discuss examples of IV-inspired approaches in ADRD research, with the goal of stimulating discussion of other potential IVs. I will also touch on the recent controversy related to aducanumab, the FDA-approved medication for treatment of AD.
Date
2/24/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
Early childhood poverty has long been associated with school achievement, educational attainment, adult earnings and, more recently, functional neural development. Two family-process pathways have been proposed – a “what money can buy” path consisting of the child enrichment and other time and money expenditures made by parents on behalf of their children, and a “stress” pathway that operates through parental mental health and parenting sensitivity. Unclear in these mostly correlational studies is whether poverty causes developmental and family process differences early in life. The seminar will describe early results on infant EEG power from a randomized control trial (RCT) of poverty reduction. Participants were 1000 mother-infant dyads who enrolled in Baby’s First Years, the first randomized control study of poverty reduction in early childhood in the United States. Mothers and their infants were recruited in hospital maternity wards in four U.S. metropolitan areas (New York City, the greater New Orleans metropolitan area, the greater Omaha metropolitan area, and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul). Shortly after giving birth, mothers were randomized to either a “high-cash gift group,” receiving $333/month, or a “low-cash gift group,” receiving $20 per month. The presentation will focus on group differences (i.e., treatment effects) on EEG-based outcomes and mediators as well as possible policy implications of these differences.
Date
2/17/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
How does the American urban context, with high levels of poverty concentration and segregation, shape the integration process of children of Latino immigrants? Stagnant Dreamers calls attention to urban structural conditions constraining social mobility for the second-generation while highlighting how the Latinx community draws on internal resources to inhibit ‘second-generation decline.’ The book follows the lives of 42 Latino young men whose immigrant families settled in Los Angeles in the 1980s and early 1990s, a time when urban violence peaked in American cities. Rather than negative acculturation processes shaping social mobility, Stagnant Dreamers documents how exposure to urban violence hurt young men’s schooling and how segregation reinforced working poor and working class insular social networks. Kin and community ties help the second-generation get by, but a lack of cross-racial and cross-class ties complicate how they navigate institutions of higher education and broker access to highly coveted jobs. Stagnant Dreamers demonstrates how the American urban context is a place of paradox – while it constrains opportunities, it also sustains the concept of the American Dream. This book explains why despite the adversity Latino young men face, most remain optimistic about their future or determined to get ahead.
Date
2/10/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
Lifespan gains have stalled in many developed nations, since even before the COVID-19 pandemic. This concerning trend amplifies the need to identify modifiable determinants of population life and health expectancy. In this talk, I will highlight mental health as one potential determinant. Leveraging data from two prospective nationwide-register studies, I will show that as older adults, young people with mental disorders (1) develop excess age-related physical and neurodegenerative diseases, (2) accumulate more associated healthcare use and costs, and (3) die earlier than people without mental disorders. These associations are evident across different psychiatric conditions and different age-related diseases, and after addressing reverse-causation and other alternative explanations. These findings suggest that ameliorating mental-health problems in young people might extend population lifespan and healthspan, and reduce the societal burden of age-related diseases.
Date
1/27/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Gross Hall, Room 270
US immigration laws criminalize unauthorized immigrants and render many of immigrants’ daily activities “illegal.” How does this affect immigrants’ attitudes and practices toward the law? Drawing on interviews with unauthorized Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia, this study examines how respondents resolve problems of law in their everyday lives. I show how time spent in the United States transforms migrants’ legal attitudes from one of “getting around the law” to one of “doing things the right way.” I highlight the implications of this legal transformation for the moral economy of immigration policy, for immigrant claims-making, and for Latino immigrants’ place in the racial hierarchy.
Date
1/20/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.
This seminar will introduce you to two prospective analytic cohort studies of aging and dementia in which all participants agree to donate brain, spinal cord, muscle and nerve, and more recently skin, fat, and bone, at the time of death. He will demonstrate how loss of cognition is a complex function of numerous brain pathologies that add to and interact with numerous indices of resilience. Finally, leveraging a unique platform of more than 50 induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from autopsied study participants, he will illustrate a path to personalized medicine for AD and resilience.
Date
1/13/2022
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
The seminar will provide an overview of the “Collaborative for Innovation in Data & Measurement in Aging” (CIDMA). CIDMA is a collaboration between the Duke Center for Population Health and Aging (CPHA) and the University of Chicago’s Center for Health Aging Behaviors and Longitudinal Investigations (CHABLIS) and their respective P30 NIA Center grants. CIDMA and its investigative team, collaborates with existing data collection studies of aging to design and conduct assessments of innovative and untested data collection and measurement methods and to disseminate and educate the field of aging research on the successes and shortcomings on these innovations. The seminar will provide an overview of CIDMA’s approach and criteria for the types of in-novation it assesses. We also will discuss findings from a recent assessment of the collection of data on social engagement/isolation related to individuals’ daily activities and spatial movements (or lack of them) in rural settings using mobile technology. This assessment was conducted in collaboration with two existing studies housed at Duke, the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS) and Project RAISE (Re-search on Adaptive Interests, Skills and Environment).
Date
11/18/2021
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
Cross-national comparisons form the basis of much of what we understand about the link between gender inequality at the societal level and family change. There has been little attention to this process in the United States, despite substantial variation in structural features of gender inequality and families across states. We leverage this variation to examine how state-level gender inequality shapes couple-level inequality following the critical transition to parenthood, in particular how state gender wage gaps, parenthood employment penalties, early family formation, and attitudes about working mothers moderate changes in couples’ relative earnings after a first birth. Our study relies on newly available identifiers in the Current Population Survey to link couples longitudinally across the 16 months of their participation in the survey, and it includes four decades of overlapping panels. Preliminary findings suggest that state-level gender inequality shapes couples’ responses to birth, with greater within-household inequality in earnings among couples living in states with fewer working mothers and less progressive attitudes about working mothers.
Date
11/11/2021
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link. 
Allison Stolte, Predoctoral Student, Department of Sociology, Duke University, presents, "State-level Contexts and Birth Outcomes: Do Types of Public Policy Approaches Shape Birth Outcomes?" Geographic disparities in birth outcomes have increased across the US over the last several years. Prior work suggests that socioeconomic structures and political institutions may shape such disparities through policies aimed at redistributing resources and providing health services (Montez, Hayward, and Wolf 2017; Navarro and Shi 2001). Of course, policies aimed at redistributing resources do not combine randomly. Instead, there are likely types of public policy approaches taken by states to shape socioeconomic and political contexts. In this paper, I first identify types of state policy approaches and then examine how the unique policy approaches shape birth outcomes. To do this, I merge state-level data on six domains of socioeconomic and political contexts to estimate profiles of state policy approaches using latent profile analysis. I then merge the identified profile data with rates of low birth weight and infant mortality from the CDC to regress state policy approach on rates of adverse birth outcomes. Preliminary findings identify three types of policy approaches taken by states. The policy approaches are associated with birth outcome rates, though differences exist by birth outcome examined. Sarah Petry, Predoctoral Student, Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, presents,  "Transitions in Older Adulthood and Life Expectancy: A Life Course Approach."   The population of Medicare-Medicaid dual eligible beneficiaries (“duals”) is growing rapidly. These beneficiaries are important to study because they comprise a vulnerable subset of publicly insured people in the US due to economic disadvantage, age, and chronic illness. However, little is known about how transitions into and out of dual eligibility, accompanied by care transitions, impact mortality. Previous research has shown that Medicaid enrollment has positive mortality effects on younger beneficiaries and that Medicare is protective for previously uninsured individuals. In addition, transitions in care setting are known to negatively impact health, but little is known about how long individuals can expect to live in skilled nursing facilities (SNF) before they die or move out. This study uses multistate life table methods on data from ten waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine differences in dual-eligible and SNF life expectancy by gender, race/ethnicity, and age.
Date
11/04/2021
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Coercive labor (adult labor trafficking and child labor) is astonishingly prevalent worldwide. Poverty creates vulnerability to labor coercion, but quantitative evidence on how anti-poverty programs mitigate this vulnerability is scarce – particularly for adult labor trafficking. This paper provides new evidence on how conditional cash transfer programs, cornerstones of anti-poverty policy in lower-income countries, influence coercive labor risk, focusing on Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program. Using multiple regression discontinuity designs, we find evidence of limited effects on adult labor trafficking risk. By contrast, we also find that the program does substantially reduce child labor among the poor – but not among those classified as living in extreme poverty. Our results suggest that for adults, income gains alone may be insufficient to reduce labor trafficking risk -- and complementary action against criminal recruiters may be simultaneously required. Coercive labor (adult labor trafficking and child labor) is astonishingly prevalent worldwide.  Poverty creates vulnerability to labor coercion, but quantitative evidence on how anti-poverty programs mitigate this vulnerability is scarce – particularly for adult labor trafficking. This paper provides new evidence on how conditional cash transfer programs, cornerstones of anti-poverty policy in lower-income countries, influence coercive labor risk, focusing on Brazil’s Bolsa Familia program.  Using multiple regression discontinuity designs, we find evidence of limited effects on adult labor trafficking risk.  By contrast, we also find that the program does substantially reduce child labor among the poor – but not among those classified as living in extreme poverty.  Our results suggest that for adults, income gains alone may be insufficient to reduce labor trafficking risk -- and complementary action against criminal recruiters may be simultaneously required.
Date
10/28/2021
Time
3:30pm - 5:00pm
Venue
Room 270 Gross Hall/ SSRI