The 2nd Annual Population Ecology, Aging, and Health Network (PEcAHN) Meeting was held at Duke on May 1 & 2, 2025. The meeting had 24 attendees from 13 long-term projects join together for the workshop. Attendees gave updates on the work they are doing in population health and aging in rural communities in the US and abroad. The group discussed a large comparative cross-site paper examining the predictors of inflammation and cardiometabolic health within and across populations. Participants then worked together to develop common, shared protocols for measuring physical activity and urbanicity - two critically important determinants of health that are notoriously difficult to measure and compare across populations. The protocols developed will be useful for moving the field of population health forward, particularly for rural populations.
Led by DUPRI scholar and Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Global Health Herman Pontzer, PEcAHN was started in 2023. PEcAHN brings together research teams conducting intensive, long-term fieldwork in rural communities in the US and abroad. For more information about PEcAHN, visit the Pontzer Lab website.