Social Disparities and Health
A message from Thomas McDade, program chair and C2S director
IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health continues to expand its scope of activities to understand how social, economic, and cultural contexts affect physical and mental health, as well as cognitive achievement, at the population level.
A pressing policy problem in the United States and other countries is the extraordinary pattern of inequality in the health of children and adults. These health disparities are widespread and not easily explained. C2S faculty are forging new paths to create better understanding of, and improvement in, human health and social outcomes. They recognize that such an effort requires complex modeling of the interplay between biological processes and environmental influences. To this end, they coalesce around the Center’s mission to:
- bring together the social, life, and biomedical sciences to understand the origins, consequences, and policy solutions for contemporary health inequalities in the United States; and
- examine how broad social, race/ethnic, and economic disparities "get under the skin" and affect human development and physical health.
Recent Research
Find out more about faculty research that encompasses early-life environments and human development, health disparities, socioeconomic status and disease, epigenetics, and public health policy, among others.
Working Papers and Publications
Recently published articles and working papers in this program area include:
- Kuzawa, C., and Z. Thayer. Epigenetic embodiment of health and disease: A framework for nutritional intervention. IPR Working Paper, WP-12-15.
- Gettler, L., J. McKenna; T. McDade, S. Agustin, C. Kuzawa. 2012. Does cosleeping contribute to lower testosterone levels in fathers? Evidence from the Philippines. PLoS ONE 7(9).
- Adam, E. K. 2012. Emotion-cortisol transactions occur over multiple time scales in development: Implications for research on emotion and the development of emotional disorders. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 77(2): 17-27.
- Wakschlag, L., D. Henry, P. Tolan, A. Carter, et al. 2012. Putting theory to the test: Modeling a multidimensional, developmentally-based approach to preschool disruptive behavior. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 51(6): 593-604.
Faculty Experts
C2S faculty come from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, biomedical sciences, pediatrics, and preventive medicine, in addition to other social science and medical fields. Learn more about them through their bios, research, and publications.
