Cells2Society

A message from Thomas McDade, program chair and C2S director IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health continues to expand its scope of activities to understand how social, economic, and cultural contexts affect physical and mental health, as well as cognitive achievement, at the population level. Faculty research overlaps with other IPR program areas including Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies; Policy, Race, and Inequality; and Education Policy. A pressing policy problem in the United States and other countries is the extraordinary pattern of inequality in the health of children and adults. These health disparities are widespread and not easily explained. C2S faculty are forging new paths to create better understanding of, and improvement in, human health and social outcomes. They recognize that such an effort requires complex modeling of the interplay between biological processes and environmental influences. To this end, they coalesce around the Center’s mission to: bring together the social, life, and biomedical sciences to understand the origins, consequences, and policy solutions for contemporary health inequalities in the United States; and examine how broad social, race/ethnic, and economic disparities "get under the skin" and affect human development and physical health. Recent Research Find out more about faculty research that encompasses early-life environments and human development, health disparities, socioeconomic status and disease, epigenetics, and public health policy, among others. Working Papers and Publications Recently published articles and working papers in this program area include: McDade, T., C. Ryan, M. Jones, M. Hoke, J. Borja, G. Miller, C. Kuzawa, and M. Kobor. 2019. Genome-wide analysis of DNA methylation in relation to socioeconomic status during development and early adulthood. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 169(1):3-11. Female Disadvantage in Under-Five Mortality in India: Measuring Explicit Gender Discrimination Using Data on Twins (WP-19-10) Is the Energy Demand of the Developing Brain Related to Lifetime Obesity Risk? (WP-19-06) Testing, Stress, and Performance: How Students Respond Physiologically to High-Stakes Testing (WP-18-31) Faculty Experts C2S faculty come from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, biomedical sciences, pediatrics, and preventive medicine, in addition to other social science and medical fields. Learn more about them through their bios, research, and publications.