Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging (MiCDA)

2023. Crystal Yee To Ng. The Role of Friends in the Lives of Dementia Caregivers: Implications for Daily Cardiovascular Health.

This study aims to examine the role of friends in the daily experiences of African American (AA) and European American (EA) ADRD caregivers. This pilot study uses data from the Stress and Well-Being in the Everyday Lives of Caregivers study (SWELCare), a study of AA and EA men and women who are primary caregivers and co-reside with their family member or friend who is living with ADRD.2

2023. Jennifer Ailshire. Colombian Survey of Aging (COSA) Biomarker Pilot.

2023. Jessica Faul. Understanding the Speed of Aging Among Adults with Cerebral Palsy.

2023. Kate Duchowny. The Relationship Between Neighborhoods, Muscle Strength and Physical Disability in the National Health & Aging Trends Study (NHATS).

2022. Helen Meier. Immune Aging Phenotypes and COVID-19 Risk in the Health and Retirement Study.

The goal of this pilot project is to determine if pre-pandemic features of immune aging (i.e., age associated T-cell subsets, inflammation, and epigenetic age) are associated with COVID-19 infection and disease severity.  The pilot draws upon data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative longitudinal study of adults over 55 years.

Priority Research Areas: Biology, Genetics and Demography of Aging

2022. Iliya Gutin, University of Texas at Austin. Life Expectancy Trends among U.S. States and Peer Countries, 1980-2020: Estimating the Impact of the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic on Widening Differences.

This project uses restricted access state-level vital statistics data from the National Center for Health Statistics as well as national-level data for 18 high-income peer countries in the Human Mortality Database to help point to similarities in key structural advantages and social policies shared by specific states and peer countries that allowed for the COVID-19 pandemic to be managed more effectively and mitigated avoidable deaths at all ages.

Priority Research Areas: Health Trends and Disparities

2022. Theresa Andrasfay, University of Southern California. Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Physical Functioning, Disability, and Associated Risk Factors among Older Adults in the United States.

This project assesses the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on population-level trends in mobility and ADL limitations and their risk factors among older adults in the United States. Analyses draw upon four nationally representative data sources: the Health and Retirement Study, the National Health Interview Survey, the National Health and Aging Trends Study and the Understanding America Study.

2021. Joelle Abramowitz. Effects of California’s Paid Family Leave on Work and Caregiving of Older Adults.

Paid family leave laws have the potential to alter older adults’ allocation of time spent in work and caregiving, which can in turn affect their own physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing. In 2004, California became the first state to require that employers provide paid family leave to their employees.  Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, this pilot project examines changes in older adults’ time spent in work and caregiving before and after California’s 2004 paid family leave law.

2021. Joshua Ehrlich. The Synergistic Impact of Late Life Vision Impairment and Genetic Risk on Cognitive Decline and Dementia.

This pilot study will test the central hypothesis that vision impairments is a “second hit” that potentiates the risk of cognitive decline and dementia among those that carry the APOE ε4 allele. This hypothesis will be tested using data from the nationally-representative Health and Retirement Study and its sub-study, the Aging, Demographics and Memory Study.

2021. Sarah E. Patterson. When Family Care Isn’t Available: Examining Unmet Care Needs of Kinless, Distanced, and Disconnected Older Adults.

2021. Yulya Truskinovsky, Wayne State University. The Lasting Impacts of COVID-19 on Long-Term Care Expectations and Outcomes for High-Need Older Adults.

Documenting changes related to the pandemic in long-term services and supports and family care is crucial in understanding the immediate impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable older adults and for establishing a nationally representative baseline to study longer-run effects.  This pilot project will use data from the Health and Retirement Study to examine the effect of the COVID-19 on long-term services and supports and care decisions among older adults who need help with at least two activities of daily living (ADLs) or with probable dementia (high need older adults).

2021. Mengyao Hu. Dementia Diagnosis Classification Using Deep Learning Neural Networks Based on Clock Drawing Test (CDT) and Medicare claims.

This pilot study will develop advanced deep learning neural networks to analyze Clock-Drawing Test images to predict dementia diagnosis. The pilot will draw upon Medicare claims linked with a large, publicly available repository of clock images from the 2011-2019 National Health and Aging Trends Study, a panel study of Medicare beneficiaries ages 65 and older.

2020. Hwajung Choi. Care Allocation among Adult Children of Older People with Dementia.

Adult children often take on central roles in caring for aging parents-especially when a parent develops dementia. How families allocate care among adult children, how this allocation changes over the course of dementia, and implications for the course of the disease remain largely unexplored. Using nearly 20 years of data from the Health and Retirement Study, the proposed pilot project will explore new measures of care allocation among adult children in families in which a parent has dementia.

2020. Jessica Faul, Colter Mitchell. The Effects of Collection Procedures on DNA Methylation Measurement in Population-based Surveys of Aging.

Epigenetics—the study of gene modifications that do not involve changes to the nucleotide sequence—holds great promise as a potential indicator of molecular change from contextual effects and aging and consequently an early signal of health disparities. Over the last few years aging studies have assayed thousands of genetic samples at great expense. However, despite evidence suggesting sensitivity of epigenetics assays to external stimuli, no research has explored the effects of collection and storage conditions on epigenetic data. This pilot project extends prior work on DNA quality and genomic assay stability to include DNA methylation—the most widely used (and most stable) measure of epigenetics in aging studies.

2020. Lindsay Kobayashi. Investigating Cross-National Variation in Later-Life Cognitive Health Inequalities.

By 2050, nearly 70% of global dementia cases are projected to occur in lower- and middle-income countries (LMICs). There is an urgent need to build up scientific evidence and resources to understand the etiology of cognitive aging outcomes in LMICs. A first step is to understand the measurement properties of various cognitive tests administered in these countries. This pilot project will use new data from five internationally harmonized longitudinal studies of aging using the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP), including three LMICs and two high-income countries. Psychometric methods will be used to equate cognitive test item scores across countries so that cross-national comparisons may proceed.

2020. Yajuan Si, David S. Johnson. Confidentiality and Privacy Protection after Record Linkage: Laying the Groundwork for Synthetic Record Linkage.

Augmenting surveys with information about the places sample members have lived can enhance the value of survey data. Restricted enclaves with remote access are valuable for sharing such data, yet barriers to use outside such environments remain because of confidentiality and privacy concerns. The Census Bureau has recently taken steps to create synthetic versions of some of its data products, but the robustness of such data to answer questions not explicitly considered by the synthetic data generation technique has been questioned. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this pilot project will develop and evaluate procedures to create survey data linked with synthetic geographic data designed to address confidential and privacy as well as analytic concerns.