IPR Seminar: Dr. Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez, Public Health, UCLA Fielding

There is growing empirical evidence supporting theories of developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD). These theories conjecture that, after prolonged latency periods, early insults and adverse conditions could translate into increased susceptibility to adult chronic illness. The implications of these relations for future patterns of human health and mortality have neither been rigorously formulated nor empirically investigated. In this talk I present empirical tests of selected predictions from a formal model of aggregate population-level impacts of DOHaD and show that populations potentially influenced by delayed effects could experience singularities in their adult mortality patterns. I use a large mortality data base for populations in the Latin American and Caribbean region (LAC) spanning one hundred and fifty years of mortality history.