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C2S Center Highlight
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) is a large nationally representative dataset that focuses on health and health-related behaviors among adolescents and young adults. Emma Adam’s and Thomas McDade’s contributions to the study warrant high accolades, having used a multidisciplinary approach to integrate physiological measures into Add Health’s fourth wave of data collection. The study is based out of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and funded primarily by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Initiated by Richard Udry in 1994, Add Health has already produced over 600 reports and journal articles. Kathie Harris, current director of Add Health and a fellow of the UNC Carolina Population Center, aims to develop the interdisciplinary reach of Add Health in its fourth wave. In the beginning, Add Health’s primary focus was adolescent sexual behavior. In its fourth wave, however, the scope broadens to incorporate biological data that may illuminate links among behavior, social contexts, and health in young adulthood. Adam and McDade advised the study’s architects on how to include biomarkers that focus on the pathways through which social contexts and lifestyle factors may affect health. These markers include physiological measures of endocrine, cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, and inflammatory activity. These efforts will help Add Health explore causal pathways of physiological stress and its relation to health. McDade believes that the use of biomarkers is key to understanding “how the environment gets under the skin.” With approximately 20,000 participants, Add Health uniquely “brings together a lot of interesting perspectives and traditions” for the “largest application of biomarkers in a social science survey,” McDade affirms. McDade and Adam were awarded approximately $1.9 million over five years to spearhead a team of eminent faculty in this effort. They include Cells to Society (C2S) Executive Board members Greg Duncan and Thomas Cook, C2S Director, P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, and Princeton University’s Doug Massey. Relying on cross-sectional analysis and non-physiological data from prior waves of Add Health, C2S researchers from various disciplines apply an innovative approach to highlight the causes of stress among young adults. The investigators have been working since June 2007 on this project, and the data should be publicly available in 2009. Scholars will then be able to use sophisticated biomeasures from Add Health to uncover a more in depth understanding of stress, providing a sound theoretical framework that will enhance future research. Contributions to Add Health grew out of a collaboration started in early 2004 with Emma Adam, Thomas McDade, Tom Cook and Fred Turek, all of whom participate in The National Institutes of Health Roadmap initiative that is geared toward building integrated networks and multidisciplinary collaborations to better address health issues of the 21st century. This group of like-minded faculty who are interested in how biology and health are related to social contexts, organized discussions which led to further collaborations with other researchers across disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, and medicine. The group also provided the framework for the center now known as Cells 2 Society (C2S). Adam describes the Add Health study as the “Core of C2S,” and McDade declares that the center has been “picking up a lot of steam” with projects such as Add Health in its portfolio. The C2S collaboration creates a forum for these researchers to “talk, kick around ideas, and see where it goes,” describes McDade. As more researchers from diverse disciplines join the C2S team, the Center continues to strategize how to address today’s health issues.
References: 1. "Study Design." Add Health: the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Apr. 2004. UNC Carolina Population Center . 24 Nov. 2007 <www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth>.
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