News

Obesity is growing, but not necessarily because we’re lazier. A new Duke study, published in PNAS, points instead to higher caloric intake as the primary driver, suggesting that diet rather than idleness plays a larger role in the global obesity crisis.

A new publication in the journal Childhood Obesity by DUPRI Scholars Michelle White and James Moody, DUPRI student Madelynn Wellons, and a group of co-authors examines how parent social network characteristics affect child obesity and health behaviors.

DUPRI Scholar and Associate Professor in the School of Nursing Hanzhang Xu has been awarded a 5-year NIH grant to Study Alzheimer's and Dementia Care in Asia. The grant is titled "Characterizing Family Structure, Care Utilization, and Well-Being among Persons with ADRD in the Asian Region." DUPRI Scholars Matthew Dupre and Scott Lynch are co-Investigators on the grant, which is administered through the National Institute of Aging.

Two new papers by a team of authors that includes DUPRI Scholars Matthew Dupre, Scott Lynch, Jessica West, and Hanzhang Xu investigate racial and ethnic disparities in cardiovascular health outcomes among adults in the United States.

Tyson Brown, a professor of sociology and associate professor in medicine, has been appointed director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University effective July 1, Provost Alec D. Gallimore announced. Brown succeeds the Cook Center’s founding director, William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr., the Samuel DuBois Cook Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and professor of African & African American studies and economics.

In a recent article published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, a group of authors including DUPRI Scholar Naomi Duke and DUPRI affiliate William Copeland examine the link between children's mental health symptoms and access to unlocked guns.

A video from DUPRI's DunedinPACE research team answers questions about how we can measure the pace of aging.

A new study—authored by DUPRI scholar, S. Malcolm Gillis Distinguished Research Professor of Public Policy, and Director of the Center for Child and Family Policy Jennifer Lansford and a team of co-authors—finds that parental warmth during childhood and adolescence predicts young adults’ beliefs that the world is good, safe, and enticing. Other childhood experiences—such as harsh parenting, low socioeconomic status, and neighborhood danger—demonstrated weak association to these "primal world beliefs." The article was published in the journal Child Development.

The inaugural PAA W. E. B. Du Bois Award in Population Science recognizes a scholar who has a record of sustained and innovative research contributions to the study of race/ethnicity in demography, with a particular focus on demographers engaging in high-impact public-facing work that informs policy and practice.

The annual Social Networks and Health workshop was held May 13-16th in Gross Hall 330 on Duke’s West campus. Partnering with DUPRI, the Professor of Sociology and DUPRI Scholar James Moody invited scholars and researchers from across the country to receive advanced training in social networks methodology, focused on implementation in the health field. Talks focused on both theoretical and implementation/application-focused training, and as this was the ‘Advanced’ year, built upon the training received in the ‘Beginner/Intermediate’ workshop the year prior. The invited speakers were from a multitude of different disciplines, including sociology, population health sciences, criminology, mathematics, ecology & evolutionary biology, OBGYN & reproductive sciences, public health, electrical engineering, and computer science.