News

Duke Population Research Institute Representation at the 2021 Gerontological Society of America (GSA) (Virtual) Scientific Meeting Konstantin Arbeev, Associate Research Professor, SSRI, Duke University Presentation Title: Genes Involved in Physiological Dysregulation and Decline in Resilience: Role in Alzheimer’s Disease  Session: Novel Genetic and Cognitive Findings From the Long Life Family Study Saturday November 13, 2021 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM Konstantin Arbeev, Associate Research Professor, SSRI, Duke University Presentation Title: Expanding the Scope of Administrative Health Records Through Advanced Statistical Methods Session: Expanding the Scope of Administrative Health Records Through Advanced Statistical Methods Friday November 12, 2021 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM (see full posting for complete listing)

A new study by Anna Gassman-Pines, Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, finds that parents' and children’s distress and food insecurity (FI) both spiked with COVID-19 school closures in March 2020, but families recovered from the spike in FI in the months that followed, as food insecurity decreased most among those who received the local food assistance program. Most measures of parents’ psychological distress remained elevated over time as parents sought to juggle child care and education demands and their own work, but parent depression or worry decreased as plans were made to address the immediate consequences of the pandemic. The data come from daily reports on FI and parent and child mood and behavior collected in a text message survey from January to May 2020 and administered to families participating in a local food assistance program in rural Pennsylvania.

Using data from two longitudinal studies, Fast Track and the Child Development Project, Jennifer Lansford, Research Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, Kenneth Dodge, William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke, and colleagues examined how an individual’s attitudes toward peers and an individual's substance use develops from early adolescence to middle adulthood. This study found that peer selection may influence substance use more than influence and that perceptions of peers’ substance use in early adulthood predicted adults’ use in their fourth decade for cannabis, alcohol and opioids. Intervention efforts sometimes attempt to change norms about substance use by providing adolescents with information that their peers engage in less substance use or are less approving of substance use than individuals perceive them to be . An implication study findings for prevention efforts is that attempts to change individuals’ own use directly may be as effective as efforts to change individuals’ perceptions of peer norms.

In their Science Review, Christopher Wildeman, Professor of Sociology, Duke University, and  co-author, Hedwig Lee, Professor of Sociology, University of Washington, St. Louis,  assess how mass incarceration  has affected families over the past five decades. Wildeman and Lee find that nearly half of all young adults in the U.S. have an immediate family member who has been jailed. Through their analysis, they reach several  conclusions. First, family member incarceration is now common for American families. Second, individuals who will eventually have a family member incarcerated are worse off than those who never will, even before the incarceration takes place. Third, family member incarceration has negative effects on families above and beyond these preexisting disadvantages. And finally, policy interventions that address the precursors to family member incarceration and seek to minimize family member incarceration would best enhance family well-being. Authors content that if the goal is to help all American families thrive, then the importance of simultaneous changes in social and criminal justice policy cannot be overstated.

In the introduction to  the RSF Journal of the Social Sciences journal volume edited by Christina Gibson-Davis, Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and Heather Hill, Professor in the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington, authors examine the impact of wealth on child well-being, such as in the quality of childcare and education, as well as instability in the home and community.

In  a recent publication in the Journal of Research in Adolescence, Kenneth A. Dodge, William McDougall Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University,  Jennifer Lansford, Research Scientist at the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy, and colleagues, investigate slow life history strategies and increases in externalizing (anger and argumentativeness) an internalizing (anxiety and depression) problems among US youth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Duke University’s James Moody, Professor in the Department of Sociology, and collaborators Lisa Keister, Professor in the Department of Sociology, and Dana Pasquale, Instructor in the Department of Population and Health Sciences, intend to build  and test a fully integrated Agent Based Model (ABM) of disease spread and socio-economic outcomes, under their recently funded NICHD R21 award, “Economic security and health disparity in COVID-19: A computational modeling approach.” Typical models for epidemic spread ignore social differentiation by race/ethnicity, working status, and social context despite the importance of these factors in fundamentally shaping epidemic exposure risk, burden of disease, and the resulting economic hardships associated with disease and disease mitigation efforts. Alternatively, Agent- based models (ABM) provide an approach that can more easily account for differential exposure, care heterogeneity, and sociologically relevant behavioral feedback processes that internally shape disease transmission, job insecurity, savings, and activity.

Sociology and health policy scholar Tyson Brown has been named the inaugural Presidential Fellow by Duke President Vincent E. Price. The one-year, part-time fellowship is designed to prepare promising mid-career faculty members for future leadership roles and to engage them in the administration of the university. Brown is associate professor of sociology, director of the Center on Health & Society, and a DUPRI Scholar. His research explores connections between social and health inequities. Most recently he has focused on identifying the structural and psychosocial mechanisms behind disparities in the health of older Americans.

DUPRI is pleased to announce a recent NICHD R25 award (1R25HD105602) to a consortium of several population research centers, including the Duke Population Research Center, to fund NextGenPop (Recruiting the Next Generation of Scholars into Population Research). This program will use the pressing growth of inequality as a lens for studying population composition and change, with the goal of increasing the pipeline of undergraduates from underrepresented backgrounds into the population sciences.  It has three specific aims: 1) to introduce advanced undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds to foundational demographic concepts and tools; 2) to integrate students’ training in research and professional development; 3) to foster ongoing engagement of program participants in population research and allied fields.

Matthew Dupre (PI) and Scott Lynch (Co-I) were recently awarded $2 million from NIH for an R01 study that will integrate risk trajectories and social determinants to enhance cardiovascular risk assessment in older adults. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the study is a collaborative effort among faculty from the Department of Sociology, Population Health Sciences, School of Nursing, and the University of Texas Southwestern.