Social Inequality and Disparities in Health:
Their Connections over the Lifecourse
Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Alberto Palloni
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P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale is Professor of Human Development and Social Policy, School of Education and Social Policy and is the founding director of Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health at the Institute for Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. She is an expert on the
interface between research and social policy for children and families, a former Congressional Science Fellow, and the first developmental psychologist to be tenured in a public policy school in the United States.
Chase-Lansdale specializes in multidisciplinary research on social issues and how they affect family functioning and the development of children, youth, and adults. She is an expert in large-scale data sets as well as intensive behavioral measurement. Her edited books include Human Development Across Lives and Generations: The Potential for Change (2004) with Kathleen Kiernan and Ruth J. Friedman and For Better and For Worse: Welfare Reform and the Well-Being of Children and Families (2001) with Greg Duncan.
Alberto Palloni is Board of Trustees Professor in Sociology and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Palloni is a demographer and sociologist who works on health and mortality, socioeconomic inequality, aging, criminology and statistical and mathematical models for the spread of illnesses. His current research interests investigate the relationship between early health status and social stratification and inequality and poverty in the United States, determinants of health and mortality disparities among ethnic groups in the United States, families and households in Africa and Latin America, aging and mortality in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the application of mathematical and statistical models to the study of health and mortality determinants, fertility, social stratification, and the spread of disease, in particular for HIV/AIDS.
Developmental Stress and the Origins of Adult Disease
Dr. Andrea Danese
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Dr. Andrea Danese is a psychiatrist and Wellcome Trust Research Fellow based at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. He trained in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Pavia School of Medicine, Italy. He then moved to UK where he trained in psychiatric research methods at the Institute of Psychiatry and in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Danese’s multidisciplinary research focuses on the origins of mind-body interplay. He is testing developmental hypotheses of health and disease in the Dunedin Health and Development Study, an ongoing longitudinal prospective study that followed up a representative birth cohort of 1,000 individuals from Dunedin, New Zealand, from birth to age 32 years. He is also testing genetic hypothesis of vulnerability and resilience to stress in the Vulnerability to Stress (V2S) Study, an experimental project on human stress physiology. Dr. Danese is registered as Specialist in General Psychiatry in the UK and Italy.
Sex Differences in Obesity Rates in Poor Countries:
Evidence from South Africa
Alicia Menendez
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Alicia Menendez is a Research Associate (Assistant Professor) in the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and a lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include development economics, poverty and inequality, labor economics, and household behavior. She is particularly
interested in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently engaged in a project that collects and analyzes data on individuals' health and economic status, the costs associated with illness and death, and the impact of adult deaths on households and children's well being in a series of household surveys in South Africa.
Challenges of Using Behavioral Health Data to Improve Public Education
Bryan Samuels
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Bryan Samuels is Chief of Staff of Chicago Public Schools. Since his appointment in 2006, Samuels has focused on timely implementation the district’s ambitious reform agenda. The Chicago native began his public career in 1990 as an assistant with the Human Services Department under former Illinois Governor James Thompson. Afterworking with former Governor Thompson, Samuels spent more than 10 years working in state and local governments within seven states across the nation. Prior to becoming Chief of Staff of Chicago Public Schools, Samuels served as the Director of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Mental Health in Childhood and Human Capital
Mark Stabile
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Mark Stabile is Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Rotman School of Management and the Director of School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge Massachusetts and a fellow at the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis, Italy. From 2003-2005 he was the Senior Policy Advisor to the Ontario Minister of Finance where he worked on health, education, and tax policy. His recent work focuses on the economics of child health and development, the public/private mix in the financing of health care, and tax policy and health insurance. His recent publications include “Child Mental Health and Human Capital Accumulation: the Case of ADHD,” in the Journal of Health Economics, “Socio-economic Status and Child Health: Why is the Gradient Stronger for Older Children,” in the American Economic Review, “The Integration of Child Tax Credits and Welfare: Evidence from the Canadian National Child Benefit Program,” in the Journal of Public Economics. He has advised the Senate of Canada, Health Canada, and the Ontario Ministry of Health, among others, on health care reform. He is co-editor of a forthcoming book on health care reform, Exploring Social Insurance: Can a Dose of Europe Cure Canadian Health Care Finance.
Early-Life Health Disadvantage and Adult Social Status:
Variation and Pathways
Margot I. Jackson
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Margot Jackson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton University Office of Population Research and Center for Health and Well-Being. Jackson is a sociologist and demographer with interests in social stratification, health and child well-being. Her work examines the social causes and consequences of health inequalities among children and young adults, and the broader role that health disparities play in generating social inequality intragenerationally and maintaining it intergenerationally. Using U.S. and British data, she has studied children's neighborhood environment, and how changes in it over time may influence healthy behaviors and outcomes; the role of educational performance and tracking in explaining links between early-life health and adult social status; and how the influence of poor childhood health on socioeconomic success varies by race/ethnicity and social background. Dr. Jackson received her PhD in sociology from UCLA in 2007. After completing her post-doctoral fellowship, Jackson will begin as an assistant professor in the sociology department at Brown University.
Early Childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment Behavior and Health
Greg Duncan
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Greg Duncan is Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. He earned his PhD in Economics at the University of Michigan in 1974. Duncan has published extensively on issues of income distribution, child poverty and welfare dependence. He is co-author with Aletha Huston and Tom Weisner of Higher Ground: New Hope for the Working Poor and Their Children (Russell Sage, 2007). With Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, he co-edited Consequences of Growing up Poor (Russell Sage, 1997). Prior to joining the Northwestern faculty in 1995, he was principal investigator of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics project at Michigan's Survey Research Center. Duncan was elected president of the Population Association of America for 2008. He was elected president of the Society for Research in Child Development for 2009-2011. |
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