Cross-Center Webinar: How State Contexts Impact Population Health

The recording of the Nov. 14, 2024 cross-center webinar, How State Contexts Impact Population Health, is now available. In this webinar, two distinguished researchers discussed how U.S. state policies and systems can affect racial and regional inequities in health and longevity. Tyson H. Brown (Duke University) focused on innovative and best practices for measuring and modeling […]

Tyson H. Brown (Duke University) focused on innovative and best practices for measuring and modeling state-level structural racism to advance aging health research.
Jennifer Karas Montez (Syracuse University) summarized findings from recent studies that have connected the dots between changes in states’ policy contexts in recent decades and changes in population health.

This webinar was hosted by PRB and the Coordinating Center for the Centers on the Demography and Economics of Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias, with funding from the National Institute on Aging.

Older adults’ social ties are more important for physical and mental health than previously thought, new research shows.

Older Americans with strong social connections are healthier and live longer than their socially isolated peers. Increasingly, researchers are finding that the components of good health are not only the absence of mental disorders and physical disease but also the presence of robust social relationships.

In the new edition of PRB’s Today’s Research on Aging, Paola Scommegna, Mark Mather, and Diana Elliott explore recent research probing the dynamics of social connection and health supported by the National Institute on Aging. The findings point to myriad ways in which social ties bolster health—from slowing aging and boosting cancer-fighting hormones to preventing depression and protecting memory. Health policymakers and program planners can use this evidence to inform a variety of interventions—particularly those aimed at reducing social isolation in vulnerable groups—to support longer and healthier lives for older Americans.

Paola Scommegna, Mark Mather, and Diana Elliott (November 2024), More Than a Feeling: How Social Connection Protects Health in Later Life, Today’s Research on Aging, No. 44

Publications

Leonid A. Gavrilov & Natalia S. Gavrilova (2024), Exploring Patterns of Human Mortality and Aging: A Reliability Theory Viewpoint. Biochemistry (Moscow), 89: 341-355.

Natalia S. Gavrilova & Leonid A. Gavrilov (2024), Compensation effect of mortality is a challenge to substantial lifespan extension of humans. Biogerontology, 25: 851–857.

Megan Huisingh-Scheetz, Naoko Muramatsu, R Tamara Konetzka, Marshall H. Chin (2024), Leveraging Health Services Research to Help Address Aging Health Equity. Generations, 48(2): 1-13.

Megan Huisingh-Scheetz, Roscoe F. Nicholson III, Saira Shervani, Chelsea Smith, Laura Finch, Yadira Montoya, Louise C. Hawkley (2024), A Pilot Study Evaluating the Feasibility, Utilization, and Estimated Functional Impact of EngAGE: A Voice-Activated Device Exercise and Social Engagement Program for Older Adult – Care Partner Dyads. JMIR Aging, 7:e56502.

Awards

Micah Prochaska was awarded an NIA R43 with Adaptive Testing Technologies to build and validate a computerized adaptive test (CAT) for fatigability (CAT-F) and then integrate this CAT-F into the UChicago Medical Center electronic health record (NIH Reporter)

The Supporting Healthy Aging Resources & Education (SHARE) Network, led by Katherine Thompson, was renewed for another five years as a HRSA-funded Geriatrics Workforce Enhancement Program (GWEP). (UChicago Medicine)

David Meltzer and the Comprehensive Care Network received an AHRQ R13 conference grant to support a conference on applying an implementation science lens to defragmenting care for patients at increased risk of hospitalization (NIH Reporter)

Affiliates of the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging, Linsday Kobayashi, Joshua Ehrlich & Vicki Freedman from the University of Michigan, and Neil Mehta from the University of Texas-Galveston, guest-edited a November 2024 supplemental issue of the Journals of Gerontology: Medical Sciences focused on “Multidisciplinary Perspectives of Dementia and Related Population Trends.” The full issue is available online.

Congratulations to CHABIS associate Megan Huisingh-Scheetz, who received the Mid-Career Innovation Award from the Gerontological Society of America at their annual meeting in November. This award acknowledges outstanding contributions of an established mid-career GSA member of the Health Science section to an innovative and influential area of the field in research and/or practice. These innovative and influential contributions may include achievements across a wide range of scholarship, including research, practice, teaching, application, and integration.

Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz uses her background in Geriatrics and Epidemiology to study the role of activity in the pathophysiology of frailty and aging. As a clinician investigator and NIA K23 recipient, her research has focused on understanding how objectively measured activity and sedentary behavior patterns, resting metabolic rate, and body composition relate to frailty progression and frailty-related outcomes. Through her work, she analyzes accelerometry data to assess and trend activity patterns as markers of frailty and to inform frailty activity interventions using the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project dataset, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey dataset, and local data. In partnership with NORC and Orbita, Inc, Dr. Huisingh-Scheetz also developed and is studying the impact of EngAGE, a technology-based tool utilizing a voice assistant to deliver exercise programming to older adults in their home to reduce frailty. The program leverages caregivers to provide social motivation to the older adult to simultaneously combat loneliness.

Welcome to Season 4 of Minding Memory, where we are welcoming a new co-host, Lauren Gerlach to the Minding Memory team. Lauren is a Geriatric Psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and a member of the CAPRA leadership team. In this episode, Lauren shares a little background on her research interests, what it’s like to be a geriatric psychiatrist, and some lessons learned about using “uncool” emoticons or emojis when texting.

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Minding Memory

CEDA Center on the Economics & Demography of Aging

You are invited to submit an abstract for presentation at the 2025 Workshop on Determinants of Adult Mortality, Morbidity, and Healthy Aging in LMICs. The workshop will be held virtually on Friday, March 7, 2025. Please find further information on the workshop in the attached call. One page abstracts should be submitted by November 1, 2024 to [email protected].

This workshop is jointly sponsored by the NIA-supported Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at UC Berkeley and the Center on Biodemography and Population Health at USC.

We look forward to your submissions.

Julie Bynum discussed how and why location matters for a dementia diagnosis. Bynum told NPR, “We tell anecdotes about how hard it is to get a diagnosis and maybe it is harder in some places. It’s not just your imagination. It actually is different from place to place.”

A new Alzheimer’s study suggests where you live can affect the odds of a diagnosis (NPR)
Your ZIP code may determine your dementia diagnosis, study finds (CNN)

Original research:
Julie P W Bynum, Slim Benloucif, Jonathan Martindale, A James O’Malley, Matthew A Davis (2024). Regional variation in diagnostic intensity of dementia among older U.S. adults: An observational study. Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

Center on Healthy Aging Behaviors and Longitudinal Investigations

This new publication by Jennifer Caputo & Linda Waite from CHABLIS and Kathleen Cagney, now at MiCDA (University of Michigan) resulted from a CHABLIS pilot award:

Jennifer Caputo, Kathleen A. Cagney, Linda Waite. 2024. Keeping Us Young? Grandchild Caregiving and Older Adults’ Cognitive Functioning. Journal of Marriage and Family, 86(3):633-654.

“This study investigates longitudinal associations between providing care to grandchildren and cognitive functioning. It also examines heterogeneity in these relationships.”

Congratulations to Jennifer Karas Montez who was elected to President-Elect of The Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science!

New Grants

CAPS affiliates Catherine García, Jenna Wells, and Kai Zhang who were recently awarded CAPS pilot grants! You can learn more about these exciting projects here: https://asi.syr.edu/caps/research-2/caps-pilot-grant-program/

Jennifer Karas Montez is co-principal investigator on a 5-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Institute on Aging for the Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities, which she has co-lead since 2019

Shannon Monnat is co-principal investigator on a 5-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Institute on Aging for the Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging (INRPHA), which she has co-lead since 2019.