Bullied in fifth grade, poor health in tenth grade?

A new study in Pediatrics, co-authored by faculty member Mark Schuster, examines the longitudinal associations of bullying with mental and physical health from elementary to high school. The study, titled “Peer Victimization in Fifth Grade and Health in Tenth Grade,” revealed that bullying was associated with worse mental and physical health, greater depression symptoms, and lower self-worth over time. These findings suggest that if clinicians recognize bullying when it first starts and intervene accordingly,…

Socioeconomic status and obesity in Cairo, Egypt: A heavy burden for all

Egypt has an extremely high obesity rate–much higher than would be expected given the country’s level of economic development. How does this paradox affect the correlation between SES and obesity? Faculty members Ichiro Kawachi, SV Subramanian, and Allan Hill conducted a study which found that obesity is prevalent across the SES spectrum in Cairo, i.e. there are no marked correlations between obesity and SES measures such as education, household expenditures,…

Berkman’s paper factors in regional context to trends in educational gradient of mortality

Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman, PhD, and former RWJF scholar Jennifer Karas Montez co-authored a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, titled “Trends in the Educational Gradient of Mortality Among US Adults Aged 45 to 84 Years: Bringing Regional Context Into the Explanation.”

Block comments on Latin America’s lead in fight against junk foods

Jason Block, MD, Assistant Professor, Obesity Prevention Program, Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Pop Center faculty member, is quoted in this Guardian article titled “Latin America leads the fight against junk food with the US on the sidelines.”

Hiram Beltran-Sanchez’s paper on disparities in Black-White mortality

In a new study published in Population Research and Policy Review, former Bell fellow Hiram Beltran-Sanchez and colleagues use the concept of avoidable/amenable mortality to estimate cause-of-death contributions to the difference in life expectancy between whites and blacks by gender in the United States between 1980 and 2007. Their findings show that a substantial portion of black-white disparities in mortality could be reduced given more equitable access to medical care and health interventions.

Former RWJF Scholar Papachristos’ paper on network exposure & homicide victimization in African American community

Andrew Papachristos, PhD, a scholar in the RWJF Health & Society Scholars Program at the Pop Center from 2010- 2012, had an article titled “Network Exposure and Homicide Victimization in an African American Community” published in The American Journal of Public Health.

Former RWJF Scholar Nandi’s paper on inequalities in HIV/AIDS prevalence in sub-Saharan African countries

Arijit Nandi, PhD, a scholar in the RWJF Health & Society Scholars Program at the Pop Center from 2008- 2010, had a article titled Socioeconomic inequalities in HIV/AIDS prevalence in sub-Saharan African countries: evidence from the Demographic Health Surveys published on February 18, 2014 in the International Journal for Equity in Health.