Huber Lecture: Dr. Kathleen Harris, University of North Carolina, James Hear Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Talk is 2:30-4pm, reception to follow
140 Pfhal Hall
Theme: Population Health
Title of Talk: The Role of Social Factors in Pre-disease Pathways Across the Early life Course
Abstract: Dr. Harris will highlight the importance of social factors during adolescence and young adulthood that lead to health risk and future disease in later life by exploiting the biosocial design she implemented in the NIH Add Health Study. Harris will first present an argument for the importance of studying health and disease risks among young people who are thought to be otherwise quite healthy. She will then provide illustrative findings on the importance of social factors in the development of health and well-being in young adulthood, including the role of social isolation and social integration in social networks, the reciprocal effects of health and human capital across adolescence and early adulthood, the differential health benefits of social mobility by race and ethnicity, genetic effects of social connections, and early life disparities in biological aging. The implications of her findings identify specific early life stages in which interventions to improve health and reduce disparities would be most effective.
KATHLEEN MULLAN HARRIS is the James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy, and Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on social inequality and health with particular interests in health disparities, biodemography, social science genomics, and life course and aging processes. Dr. Harris served as Director and Principal Investigator of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) from 2004-2021 (deputy director 1999-2004). She transformed Add Health into a landmark study, funded by 23 NIH institutes and agencies, in which she integrated biological and genomic data with social and behavioral data for the scientific study of developmental and health trajectories across the early life course. Dr. Harris works with an interdisciplinary set of scholars from sociology, epidemiology, nutrition, economics, cardiology, genetics, and survey methods to publish research on such topics as the health effects of despair, isolation and stress; social genetic effects; health costs of upward mobility; early life origins of biological aging; and the obesity epidemic and young adult health. She was awarded the Golden Goose Award from the US Congress in 2016 for major breakthroughs in medicine, social behavior, and technological research. Dr. Harris is past president of the Population Association of America, past president of the Interdisciplinary Association of Population Health Science, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania.
A reminder that all participants need to register in order to participate in the spring seminar series. The link to the registration is here: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIqf-GhqDgiG9WdqaEWVPZ5HCi_u9rmSUZp
