W. Andrew Rothenberg, Jennifer Lansford, Jennifer Godwin, Kenneth Dodge, and their co-authors recently published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry examining the effects of the Fast Track intervention on mental health and the need for health services for the children of participants. Fast Track, which started in the early 1990s, blended parent behavior-management training, child social-cognitive skills tutoring, home visits, and classroom support from grades 1 through 10 for children who had early emerging conduct problems. This study found that once the original Fast Track participants grew up and had children of their own, their children used fewer general inpatient services and fewer inpatient or outpatient mental health services.
In a paper recently published in JAMA Network Open, a team of researchers, including DUPRI scholar Nrupen Bhavsar, use electronic health records in Durham, NC to "quantify associations of structural racism indicators with neighborhood prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD), diabetes, and hypertension."
So far this year, DUPRI scholars and students have published dozens of papers in academic journals that demonstrate both the breadth and depth of research in all areas of population science. Below we highlight many recent studies. The diversity of topics include contraception use, Alzheimer's, generational wealth, social networks and HIV, cognitive aging, COVID-19, and the long-term effects of childhood conduct problems, among others.
Duke psychology professor Terrie Moffitt added a new honor to the many she has received in a career that made her one of the most highly cited researchers in the world. At a ceremony in Windsor Castle in December, King Charles III bestowed upon her the title of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, commonly known as the MBE.
Wildeman et al. unite the classic literature on the intergenerational transmission of criminal activity with the nascent literature on the collateral consequences of mass incarceration.
Recently installed as the 140th president of the American Historical Association (AHA), Duke historian and DUPRI scholar Thavolia Glymph says she came to her deep interest in the field when she was a youngster. In an interview with the AHA newsmagazine, Glymph shares thoughts on her influences, the power of historical research and the challenges of writing about people who left behind little documentation.
An applied economist at Sanford and DUPRI, Lisa Gennetian has new ideas about how government can reduce child poverty. She argues that to help families, we need updated policies that build on employment, two-parent households and safety nets.
DUPRI Scholar Jennifer Lansford, along with Genevieve Hunter at DGHI, has received funding from the HHS Office for Population Affairs for a Grant titled "Advancing Equity in Adolescent Health through Evidence-Based Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs and Services." This project expands reach, builds capacity, and scales up evidence-based programs offering positive youth development and sexuality education to address health disparities in the most vulnerable areas across rural Eastern North Carolina. The project partners with interdisciplinary professionals to connect with youth most in need within community-based organizations, juvenile justice, foster care, and supportive school settings. The project uses a mixed methods approach to monitor and evaluate implementation, scale-up, and sustainability from the perspective of different key stakeholders, including adolescents, parents and guardians, youth service providers, and agency leaders. This grant aims to reduce teen pregnancy and improve adolescent health in high-risk rural communities in Eastern North Carolina by strengthening operational and programmatic capacity for evidence-based programs that focus on positive youth development, pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, and mental health.
DUPRI has joined the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAHPS) as an institutional member.
Race and ethnicity are notoriously difficult to measure in the U.S., and health scholars have shown over the last two decades that the common, large racial/ethnic categories of “Black,” “Asian,” and “Hispanic” mask considerable heterogeneity within groups, often based on country of origin. Recent work by Jen’nan Read (with Scott M. Lynch and Jessie S. West) found that the “White” racial category masks just as much or more heterogeneity in health as these other common categories, in part because recent “white” immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa differ substantially from white immigrants from Europe and native (i.e., 3+ generation) whites in the U.S. As a consequence of this and other studies in recent years by Dr. Read, Dr. Read has been consulting with the Census Bureau in redesigning questions measuring race/ethnicity in upcoming censuses.