Hawkins and Gillman link 3 decades of clinical and public health data to examine disparities in childhood obesity

Former RWJF Health & Society Scholar Summer Hawkins and faculty member Matthew Gillman are co-authors on a BMC Medicine article on the establishment of the Linked CENTURY database. Hawkins, Gillman and their colleagues linked the existing CENTURY ((Collecting Electronic Nutrition Trajectory Data Using Records of Youth) Study, a database of 269,959 children from birth to age 18 years with measured heights and weights, with each child’s Massachusetts birth certificate, which captures…

Do children from immigrant families in U.S. receive equal quality of pediatric healthcare?

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar program alumna Summer Hawkins, PhD, along with lead author Rocio Calvo Vilches, PhD, a former Harvard Pop Center Bell Fellow, have published a study in Maternal and Child Health Journal that finds that perceived disparities in pediatric healthcare tended to lessen from first to third generation immigrant status, although there was some variation between racial/ethnic groups.

Almost half of nonsmoking pregnant women studied in NYC show signs of secondhand smoke

Former Pop Center RWJF Scholar Summer Hawkins, PhD, has co-authored a paper indicating that nearly half of nonsmoking pregnant women studied in NYC had elevated cotinine levels despite living in a city with comprehensive tobacco control policies. Study results suggest that “health professionals need to assess sources of SHS exposure during pregnancy and promote smoke-free environments to improve maternal and fetal health.”