Cells to Society
Interdisciplinary center to tackle issues in social disparities and health

Fall 2005, Volume 27, Number 1

Lindsay Chase-Lansdale talks with Philip Greenland at the C2S conference.

No one would deny that smoking can harm a person’s lungs or eating too many fatty foods can contribute to cardiovascular disease, but how does living in public housing, the stress of discrimination, or the experience of unhappy social relationships affect life outcomes?

“Social and cultural contexts are critical determinants of human development and health, with effect sizes larger than many recognized medical risk factors,” said Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, professor of human development and social policy and an IPR faculty fellow. “The United States is characterized by profound disparities in economic resources, education, employment, and housing. But we do not know enough about the biological processes and related pathways through which such disparities influence our development, health, and psychological well-being.”

Promoting interdisciplinary linkages and research

As director of the newly created Cells to Society: The Center on Social Disparities and Health (C2S), Chase-Lansdale is heading up a novel effort at Northwestern to link life and biomedical scientists to the social sciences. Housed within the Institute for Policy Research (IPR), C2S will emulate and expand upon IPR’s broad multidisciplinary approach to social science issues.

“We are particularly excited about bringing together various areas of research that previously have been conducted in unconnected ‘silos,’” Chase-Lansdale emphasized. “The hope is that by working together in an interdisciplinary setting, Northwestern researchers will be able to provide more complete answers to how social and cultural contexts affect physical and mental health as well as cognitive achievement at the population level.”

C2S aims to push Northwestern into the forefront of a new wave of research in which measurements of biological and physiological processes are added to large-scale, population-based surveys (with sample sizes up to 20,000), Chase-Lansdale said. Such multimethod, interdisciplinary collaborations are called for in the National Institutes of Health’s “Roadmap” initiative. The center will provide the means to integrate the social and behavioral sciences into Northwestern initiatives related to the NIH Roadmap. It will also take advantage of recent faculty recruitments in the biomedical, life, and social sciences.

Collaborative effort to launch center

The idea for the center germinated following a well-received January 2004 presentation on Social Relations, Stress, Biology, and Health. Meetings with core faculty members who now make up the C2S executive committee followed. Drawn from education and social policy, anthropology, biology, sociology, law, and medicine, the executive committee represents the spectrum of disciplines that currently drive the center-sponsored interdisciplinary research projects. The C2S executive committee also plans to include additional members from the life and biomedical sciences.

In addition to Chase-Lansdale, the executive committee includes the following IPR faculty: Emma Adam, assistant professor of human development and social policy; Thomas D. Cook, Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair in Ethics and Justice; Greg J. Duncan, Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy; Christopher Kuzawa and Thomas McDade, assistant professors of anthropology; Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law; Whitney Perkins Witt, assistant professor of medicine; and Teresa Woodruff, professor of neurobiology and physiology.

Main research themes

In keeping with the mission of the Institute for Policy Research, the long-term goal of C2S is to reduce health disparities through new research findings that improve practice and policy. Research in the C2S interdisciplinary framework can lead to more precise and cutting-edge knowledge to inform interventions and policy in the United States. To this end, the center is organized around four main lines of research:

•	Social Disparities, Stress, and Health
•	Families, Relationships, and Health
•	Developmental Perspectives on Health Disparities from Conception Through Adulthood
•	Policy, Practice, Race, Culture, and Ethics

In Social Disparities, Stress, and Health, center researchers will look at how noninvasive biomarkers can be used to measure stress, immune function, and inflammation, as well as other measures of physiological function. Several C2S faculty members, in particular McDade and Adam, have been working on developing and applying biomarkers to population-based social science research. Sophisticated use of biomarkers is one area in which the center hopes to gain national ground by holding an annual summer training institute.

A particular area of strength for the center, Families, Relationships, and Health will build on existing faculty work conducted through IPR on social inclusion and exclusion, family functioning, discrimination, and racism. But added to the mix will be, for example, issues such as whether families should pursue expensive, experimental treatments. This, in turn, brings up who should have access to these cutting-edge medical discoveries.

In Developmental Perspectives on Health Disparities from Conception Through Adulthood, research will focus in particular on prenatal and perinatal environments and how they interact with social, genetic, and other biological influences. Social and biological risks to health across the life span will also be addressed.

Policy, Practice, Race, Culture, and Ethics will traverse all of the center’s research initiatives. Health disparities based on racism and cultural exclusion carry profound ethical and political implications. Certain cultural dynamics, for example, can generate resistance to biological measures and standard research procedures. Research in this area will also aim to promote responsible uses of race and ethnicity in biomedical, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical research.

First activities

Despite being only a few months old, the center has already launched an introductory conference and co-sponsored a biomarker workshop.

The June 6 introductory conference brought together more than 65 Northwestern faculty and research staff from across the university, representing schools such as medicine and education and social policy and departments such as neurobiology, psychology, economics, and microbiology. The presentations were equally broad based covering aspects of biomarkers, risk factors for heart disease, protein misfolding, neighborhood effects, and bioethics, among others.

A few days later on June 9-10, a biomarker workshop on population-based research was co-sponsored by C2S and the University of Chicago. The agenda featured C2S members, who discussed conceptual models and analytic methods for linking social and biological processes.

Future directions

C2S will swing into action this fall with several activities. It will launch its colloquium series, which will take place on Mondays.

The center has initiated the search for two senior faculty members, who will be jointly appointed between IPR/C2S and departments in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

Planning has begun for the 2006 C2S summer institute on biomarkers. The week-long institute will tackle not only the “nuts and bolts” of biomarker usage, but also detail its theoretical underpinnings as well as strengths and limitations. It is hoped that participants will come to gain a more sophisticated understanding of how biological perspectives can inform social science research.

“Many researchers are conducting large-scale national health surveys and are very interested in incorporating biomarker measures,” McDade said. “We believe that sufficient training in theory and method is critical if this is to happen successfully, and our center could become a key resource for this.”

Faculty appeal

Getting a research center off and running in a little over a year has been heady, exciting, and a lot of work, Chase-Lansdale noted. But much remains to be done—in particular, recruiting like-minded faculty to the effort. “We have an excellent team of core faculty members and collaborators,” she said, “but we are looking for other Northwestern faculty to join our center, who are willing to incorporate an interdisciplinary approach to solving issues of social disparities and health.