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Several DUPRI students attended the Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio from April 18-20. There they presented their research at both panels and poster sessions and serving as panel discussants. Below we summarize their work.

DUPRI Scholar Thavolia Glymph is among the 250 prominent scholars, artists and leaders elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, April 24.

A new study by a team of scholars, headed by DUPRI's Michelle White and Naomi Duke, examines the factors that protect children from developing obesity despite the presence of risk factors. The paper, currently in press at Academic Pediatrics, is titled "Positive Outliers: A Mixed Methods Study of Resiliency to Childhood Obesity in High-Risk Neighborhoods." Despite the high prevalence of obesity and the clustering of risk by neighborhood, few studies have examined characteristics which promote healthy child weight in neighborhoods with high obesity risk. The authors aimed to identify protective factors for children living in neighborhoods with high obesity risk. The authors identified neighborhoods with high obesity risk using geolocated electronic health record data with measured body mass index (BMI) from well child visits (2012-2017). They then recruited caregivers with children aged 5-13 years who lived in census tracts with mean child BMI percentile > 72 (February 2020- August 2021). They used sequential mixed methods (quantitative surveys, qualitative interviews) to compare individual, interpersonal and perceived neighborhood factors among families with children at healthy weight (positive outliers, PO) vs. families with ≥1 child with overweight or obesity (controls). Regression models and comparative qualitative analysis were used to identify protective characteristics.

A recently-published paper by DUPRI scholar Scott Lynch and co-authors Christina Kamis and William Copeland, titled "Associations between Configurations of Childhood Adversity and Adult Mental Health Disorder Outcomes" employs a life-course approach to analyze the influence of adverse childhood events on subsequent adult mental health. The life course perspective and cumulative inequality theory suggest that childhood adversity, occurring during a sensitive period of the life course, can have long-term consequences for adult mental health and well-being. Yet, the long-term influence of adversity on adult outcomes may depend on both the features of adverse childhood experiences (e.g., the number, type, and co-occurrence of adversities) as well as the outcome assessed. Using latent class analysis applied to several waves of prospective data from the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS; N = 1,420), the authors identify subpopulations that are similar in their adversity experiences before age 18. The authors then predict adult internalizing and substance use disorder diagnoses by adversity experience. Results reveal five distinct classes of adversity, with unique risks for specific diagnoses in adulthood.

Every year, scholars and students from DUPRI present research papers, prepare professional posters, and serve as panel discussants at Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. This year's PAA Annual Meeting will take place in Columbus, Ohio from April 17-20. Below is a list of all DUPRI scholars and students participating in PAA sessions.

Living in a poor neighborhood is linked to accelerated brain aging and increased risk for dementia early in life, regardless of income level or education. A Duke-led study suggests that targeting residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods for dementia-prevention programs and encouraging clinicians to consider a patient’s address could help reduce dementia cases.

W. Andrew Rothenberg, Jennifer Lansford, Jennifer Godwin, Kenneth Dodge, and their co-authors recently published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry examining the effects of the Fast Track intervention on mental health and the need for health services for the children of participants. Fast Track, which started in the early 1990s, blended parent behavior-management training, child social-cognitive skills tutoring, home visits, and classroom support from grades 1 through 10 for children who had early emerging conduct problems. This study found that once the original Fast Track participants grew up and had children of their own, their children used fewer general inpatient services and fewer inpatient or outpatient mental health services.

In a paper recently published in JAMA Network Open, a team of researchers, including DUPRI scholar Nrupen Bhavsar, use electronic health records in Durham, NC to "quantify associations of structural racism indicators with neighborhood prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD), diabetes, and hypertension."