Risk of stunting in rural Rwanda lowered by enrollment in community-based health-financing program

New findings suggest that for those in rural Rwanda enrolled in the program Mutuelles, which provides health insurance and access to health care (including nutrition services), the risk of being stunted was significantly lower. Harvard Pop Center faculty members Chunling Lu, PhD, Kenneth Hill, PhD, and S.V. Subramanian, PhD, along with Pop Center Research Associate Iván Mejía-Guevara, PhD, are among the authors of the paper published in the American Journal…

Could temperature deviation from past neighboring years increase mortality risk for elderly?

Harvard RWJF Health & Society Scholar Colleen Reid, PhD is an author on a paper published in International Journal of Biometeorology that examines the effects of abnormal weather patterns (temperature deviation compared to previous years) on elderly mortality.

Among older workers, are recessions linked to lowered CVD risk? It depends.

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Mauricio Avendano and former Bell Fellow Clemens Noelke have published a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology that suggests that economic recessions may be protective against CVD disease among older workers who remain employed, but may increase risk of CVD among those who experience a job loss during this period.

Novel use of genetic variants may shed light on link between education level & dementia in older age

A study published in the journal Annals of Epidemiology by Harvard Pop Center affiliated researchers including Ichiro Kawachi, Sze Yan Liu, and Maria Glymour introduces the use of genetic variants as instruments to help identify the causal effect of educational attainment on dementia risk. The study, based on instrumental variable (IV) analyses, suggests education is protective against risk of dementia in older adulthood.

Does work stress combined with family circumstances impact mortality of US mothers?

Many previous studies have separately linked job stress and family circumstances with later-life mortality among working mothers, but a new study published in Social Science & Medicine by Recent Pop Center Fellow Erika Sabbath, Harvard Pop Center Research Associate Iván Mejía-Guevara, former Bell Fellow Clemens Noelke, and Harvard Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman explores how job stress combined with family circumstances, such as being a single mother, may jointly impact…