Population Health, the Life Course, and Biosocial Processes

a PDHP primary research area

A significant barrier to progress in population health research is the tendency for academic disciplines to silo information about the aspects of health they examine and the methods they use to study them. Thus, assembling a large and diverse group of faculty to study population health and providing the infrastructure to cultivate and sustain interdisciplinary collaborations and a cells-to-society approach are vital to our mission as a population center.

A key factor in the significance of affiliate contributions arises from the collaborative group of population health scientists from across the social and health sciences who work together with survey methodologists and statisticians to shape some of the most widely used studies of health behaviors and outcomes in early and later life, and some of the most innovative ways to study health interventions. These data help to address persistent determinants undergirding health inequality, from structural racism to the interactions between unequal physical and social environments and genetic risk.

Key data collection projects led by PDHP affiliates include Monitoring the Future (MTF), the Chitwan Valley Family Study (CVFS) and a range of studies leading the population based collection and use of biospecimens. Center affiliates continue to lead in the development, integration and analysis of biomeasures in the social and health sciences. For example, conducting research to understand how genetics and environments interact to affect health at the population level requires expertise in population-based social science methods, collection and use of genetic data, and statistical approaches and survey design principles, all areas supported by field-leading PSC affiliates. Our affiliates are also on the forefront of building the intellectual and practical infrastructure to bring biospecimens into social scientific data collection and use. Affiliates are also creating and linking data to provide novel estimates of the community built, toxic and social environment on the health of residents within and across generations.

On-Campus Faculty Affiliates

Daniel Almirall, Statistics
John Bound, Economics
Thomas C. Buchmueller, Economics
Sarah Burgard, Sociology & Epidemiology
Kate Cagney, Sociology
Stephanie Chardoul, Survey Methodology
Philippa J. Clarke, Social Science and Health
Pamela E. Davis-Kean, Social Psychology
Jessica Faul, Epidemiology
Arline T. Geronimus, Public Health/ Behavioral Sciences
Margaret Hicken, Public Health
Mengyao Hu, Survey Methodology
Pamela Jagger, Public Policy
John Kubale, Epidemiology
Jeff Kullgren, Internal Medicine
Sunghee Lee, Survey Methodology
Margaret Levenstein, Economics
Helen Levy, Economics
Rod Little, Biostatistics
John E. Marcotte, Demography
Richard A. Miech, Sociology & Public Health
Colter Mitchell, Sociology
Jeffrey Morenoff, Sociology
Cheryl A. Moyer, Learning Health Sciences
Belinda L. Needham, Epidemiology
Grace Noppert, Epidemiology
Megan Patrick, Human Development
Amy M. Pienta, Sociology
Trivellore Raghunathan, Statistics
Amy Schulz, Health Behavior & Health Education
Yajuan Si, Statistics
Sarah Anne Stoddard, Nursing
Philip Veliz, Nursing
Abram Wagner, Public Health
Erin Bakshis Ware, Epidemiology
David Weir, Economics
Wei Zhao, Epidemiology

Off-Campus Faculty Affiliates

Lucie Kalousova, Sociology
Angela Dixon, Sociology