Aging Trajectories & Disparities Across the Life Course
This classic CDHA theme examines dynamic links between early and midlife life exposures and physical, mental, and cognitive health outcomes, with attention to social and economic determinants of longevity and health disparities. It evolved jointly with the long-running Wisconsin Longitudinal Study and is enriched by the growth of other locally-led population-based surveys, and new studies targeting populations under-represented in existing research.
Biodemography
Biodemography integrates biological and social demographic data to better understand their interplay in health and aging outcomes. Research in this theme develops, collects, and analyzes biomarkers (in saliva, microbiomes, and blood); generates and validates genetic, epigenetic, and microbiome measures; and explores their relationship with social, economic, environmental, and behavioral factors. A decade of integrating biodemography into key research studies has positioned CDHA as a central hub in this field.
Demography of Dementia & Cognition
Research in this new theme aims to clarify biological and behavioral factors that influence cognition and disparities therein across populations. Assessing cognition is a current focus in CDHA’s flagship studies and for scholars examining a wide range of interventions to alter the risk and consequences of cognitive decline for individuals, families, and communities.
Health Policy & Health Services Research
This theme leverages CDHA’s growing expertise in the analysis of causal inference to examine how public policies, insurance access, health care systems and technologies, and health behaviors and interventions impact health in aging populations. This research emphasizes rigorous evaluation of healthcare organization and delivery to varied demographic groups.
Places, Health, & Aging
Research in this theme seeks to increase our understanding of how geographic, socioeconomic, policy, and environmental contexts shape spatial patterns and disparities in health. Novel contextual and administrative data linkages and spatial methods are facilitating exploration of variation in exposures and health across residential neighborhoods, counties, states, regions and nations and elucidating key mechanisms through which places impact aging populations.
