Linking Adult Outcomes to Early Life Experiences
Conference seeks to promote interdisciplinary models of health and attainment

Fall, 2008, Volume 30, Number 2

Bryan Samuels, CPS chief of staff, discusses school health policy.

A person’s late-life outcomes can be measured in myriad ways; income, social status, physical health, and mental and emotional well-being are just a few. Researchers and policymakers have only recently begun to investigate how these outcomes are related.

To explore how such diverse factors interact and reinforce each other to produce later life outcomes, experts, advocates, and policymakers gathered on May 16 in Chicago for a conference on “Health and Attainment over the Lifecourse: Reciprocal Influences from Before Birth to Old Age.”

“Part of what I’ve spent my time at CPS doing over the last 18 months is trying to build a consensus within this public school system that these are related,” said Bryan Samuels, chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

Samuels was the keynote speaker at the conference, which was co-sponsored by IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health. Three University of Chicago research centers—including the Harris School’s Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, which coordinated the conference—were also co-sponsors.

“We’re hoping to build interdisciplinary bridges to get a better idea of exactly how early experiences and childhood health affect adult outcomes,” said developmental psychologist and IPR Faculty Fellow Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, who directs C2S.

By using integrated disciplinary models such as those found in psychology, researchers might be able to better explain the interactions of diverse factors and their significance on health and attainment in old age.

Social demographer Alberto Palloni discussed the large and pervasive effects of education on mortality and adult health. Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, Palloni showed that the mortality rates for people at age 50 without a high school diploma equal the rates for those at 60 with a college education. His findings mirror those of other researchers, signaling a disturbing trend of persistent health and mortality disparities in the United States. The socioeconomic (SES) health and mortality gradient reflects growing inequality and the enduring intergenerational correlation of adult SES. Palloni called for more research on early childhood health effects to see how they could act as a mechanism that might reproduce inequalities in adult health, SES, and mortality rates. He is Board of Trustees Professor in Sociology and an IPR faculty fellow at Northwestern.

	Emma Adam (center) moderates a Q&A session with Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Alberto Palloni after their presentation.

Another researcher, Andrea Danese, matched childhood stress to modifications in developmental trajectories, showing a long-term effect on disease risk. Using data from New Zealand’s Dunedin Study, he measured inflammatory responses in adults who faced adverse experiences in early childhood, such as harsh discipline or abuse.

While inflammation acutely helps the body cope with tissue damage or infection, chronic elevation in inflammation levels can be detrimental to health. Danese found that maltreated children show elevated inflammation levels in adulthood and thus are at high risk of cardiovascular disease. Up to 10 percent of cases with elevated inflammation levels in adulthood might be attributed to childhood stress, he said. Danese is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry.

Additional presentations were made on sex differences in obesity rates in poor countries; mental health in childhood and human capital; early-life health disadvantages and adult social status; and early childhood poverty and adult attainment, behavior, and health.

“The presentations demonstrated the positive associations between health and education at different stages of life from preconception to old age, including how socioeconomic status, physical and mental health, and educational attainment can affect life outcomes,” said Ariel Kalil, Harris School associate professor, who directs the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy and co-organized the conference.

One lesson for public schools is that effective change requires integrated models and evidence-based standards, such as those presented at the conference, Samuels said. So CPS is trying out a new public health approach to its policies at every level. While improving academic performance is still the district’s chief responsibility, he said, “I think we’ve built an understanding that we need to reduce the behavioral health barriers to learning as a means to get at that initial goal.”

To view the videos and presentations, visit the Web page, www.northwestern.edu/ipr/c2s/events/healthattain-info.html.