Honor/Award
Jennifer Karas Montez, Director of the Center for Aging and Policy Studies (CAPS) at Syracuse University, and Mark Haywood, Texas Center on Aging and Population Sciences (CAPS) have been elected to the Board of Directors for the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Science (IAPHS).
The purpose of IAPHS is to foster scientific innovation and discovery to improve the health of populations and reduce health disparities. The mission of IAPHS is to provide a forum that will connect population health scientists across disciplines and sectors, advance the development of population health science, and promote its application. IAPHS carries out its mission by pursuing three objectives:
• Advance population health science
• Improve population health by promoting the communication and application of science
• Support population health scientists in their careers
Dr. Karas Montez’s work investigates the large and growing disparities in U.S. adult mortality since the early 1980s. She is particularly interested in why trends in mortality have been most troubling for women, low-educated adults, and states in the South and Midwest. In a related line of work, she is tracing how the changing political economy of U.S. states, reflecting decades of deregulation and consolidation of political authority at the state level, has influenced adult mortality. Dr. Karas Montez has also conducted influential work on how early-life exposures shape active life expectancy among older adults and, using a biosocial perspective, how the health consequences of those exposures unfold for women during the menopause transition.
Dr. Mark Haywood’s research addresses how life course exposures and events influence the morbidity and mortality experiences of the adult population. Recent studies have clarified how early life conditions influence socioeconomic, race and gender disparities in adult morbidity and mortality; the demography of race/ethnic and gender disparities in healthy life expectancy; social inequality in the biomarkers of aging, and the health consequences of marriage, divorce, and widowhood. Most recently, he has been investigating the fundamental inequalities in adult mortality in the United States arising from educational experience, differences in these associations by race and gender, and trends in inequality in mortality. Currently, he is part of a national scientific team examining the role of federal and state policies shaping the growing inequality in life chances in the US adult population.