Losing a family member is stressful, especially if that person is a household member. Since Black people are both more likely to live in a home that includes extended family members and also face lower life expectancy than White people, former Bell Fellow and current visiting scientist Angela Dixon set out to explore the impacts of this increased likelihood of exposure to the death of a household member among Black…
Automation of scheduling and reminders associated with improved transition to postpartum healthcare
With the aim of helping to improve maternal health outcomes, Harvard Pop Center faculty member Jessica Cohen, PhD, and her colleagues designed a behavioral economic intervention utilizing default scheduling of appointments with primary care providers and text message appointment reminders to support new mothers in getting important follow-up care. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is featured in this Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health news post, in…
How did household size & virtual contact impact anxiety levels associated with social distancing during COVID-19 in rural South Africa?
A study by researchers affiliated with the national study Health and Aging in Africa: Longitudinal Studies in South Africa (HAALSA) based on data from a phone survey reveals that although declines in social interaction were associated with increased anxiety levels among both men and women in rural South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic, women living in larger households seemed to be especially impacted. “For women, living in larger households may…
Exploring the link between an optimistic attitude and physical functioning as women age
Bell Fellow Hayami Koga, along with Harvard Pop Center faculty members David Williams and Laura Kubzansky and their colleagues, have published a study in JAMA Psychiatry on the association between optimism and physical functioning among older women finding higher levels of optimism to be linked with better performance at baseline (grip strength and standing mobility) and slower rates of decline in several measures over a six-year period. Read about their…
Voting Rights Act linked with reduction in Black infant deaths in Jim Crow states
HCPDS Graduate Student Affiliate Tamara Rushovich, along with faculty member Nancy Krieger and their colleagues have published a study in the American Journal of Public Health that investigates the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on Black and Black vs. White infant deaths in Jim Crow states. Photo by Barbara Verge on UnsplashÂ
Three “Conversations” that tell the story of health and aging in rural South Africa
Physicians, professors and research scientists affiliated with Health and Aging in Africa: Longitudinal Studies in South Africa (HAALSA)—the ten-year (and counting) project that has been following a cohort that started as 5,000 men and women aged 40 and over—have penned three pieces in The Conversation that delve into unique aspects of this burgeoning population: Pioneering researchers Stephen Tollman and Kathleen Kahn from the University of the Witwatersrand reflect back on…
How can socioeconomic-based cardiovascular disease disparities in low- and middle-income countries be reduced?
A study published in Nature Medicine by HCPDS graduate student affiliate Dorit Stein, and other HCPDS affiliates including Till Bärnighausen, Maja Marcus, Jennifer Manne-Goehler, Nikkil Sudharsanan, and Stephane Verguet (along with their colleagues) simulates that improvements in hypertension management has greater impact “among bottom wealth quintiles in middle-income countries and in countries with larger baseline disparities in hypertension management.”
Study links changes in work environment with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease among most at-risk employees
A reduction in stressful conditions at work has now been linked to a reduction in cardiovascular disease (CVD) among those employees who were at an elevated risk of CVD at the start of the intervention study, especially if they were older workers. Researchers affiliated with The Work, Family & Health Network Study deployed interventions at two different types of works sites (IT and long-term care) designed to increase work-life balance…
What’s to blame for the lagging U.S life expectancy? A closer look at mid-life ‘deaths of despair’ and retirement-age chronic disease
Recent Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work Leah Abrams, PhD, is lead author on A Brief Report published in PNAS Demography that explores what could be driving the troubling status of U.S. life expectancy which has been stagnating since 2010. Abrams and her colleagues find chronic disease at the time of retirement to be a bigger factor than the ‘deaths of despair’ (drug overdose, alcohol abuse, and suicide) that have…
Comment: “Prosociality should be a public health priority”
With poignant lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic fresh in our minds, faculty member Laura Kubzansky, PhD, corresponding author on a Comment published in Nature Human Behavior, makes a strong case for why prosociality (defined as positive other-regarding behaviors and beliefs) should be more deeply explored—with a sense of urgency—as part of an ‘asset-based’ approach to address the rising rates of hopelessness, despair, and poor mental health in the U.S.