Investigating social disparities in health (or often referred to more generally as "the social determinants of health") across the life course is a major focus in the demography of aging. CPHA Scholars have contributed to this "long view" of the life course using many existing databases, including many public domain studies such as the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS), and original Data Collections under Duke leadership. They also have developed new measurements and statistical methods for analyzing life-course data.
Illustrative CPHA research in this thematic area include:
- Jen’nan Read’s work has focused on the measurement of race and ethnicity. Specifically, her work shows that the same degree of heterogeneity exists for Whites based on ancestry (e.g., Eastern European, Western European, Middle Eastern, North African). Findings from her recent pilot study challenge the common practice of using non-Hispanic Whites as a monolithic reference group in inequalities research.
- Giovanna Merli, with collaborators at Duke, the University of Pennsylvania (PARC’s Elo and Behrman) and the University of Ghana, are preparing to launch a longitudinal study of Ghanaians in Ghana and the US (titled Ghana Migrant Health Study, GhaMHeS), which aims to understand the countervailing forces promoting and undermining African immigrant health over the life course and proposes an approach that can be transferred to other immigrant groups to evaluate diversity in immigrant health and by nativity.
- Tyson Brown studies the impact of structural racism on health trajectories in later life.
- Matthew Dupre and Jessica West examine racial differences in age-related hearing loss among Black and White adults using electronic health record data from the Duke University Health System.
- Avshalom Caspi and Terrie Moffitt investigated determinants of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and resistance. They also explored the links between mental and physical health using data from the Norwegian primary-care register.