Cells to Society Receives NICHD Grant
Award will spur center's development

Fall 2006, Volume 28, Number 1

P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale

IPR’s recently launched center, Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on Social Disparities and Health, has received a five-year, $1.2 million R21 grant from the Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch (DBSB) of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

R21 developmental infrastructure awards from the DBSB provide support for potentially high-risk/ high-payoff new population research centers that are in the early stages of development. Those awarded by the NICHD are also used to enhance population research at specific institutions—in particular through interdisciplinary collaboration—and to develop innovative approaches to population research. The NICHD confers the grants with the expectation that recipients will apply for an R24 award to fund a population center four to five years after receiving the R21.

“We are thrilled to have received this award,” said IPR Faculty Fellow P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, the center’s director and professor of human development and social policy. “It is a validation of all of our efforts in launching the center and recognition of our vision of C2S as a place where the life and biological sciences can come together to produce a more comprehensive and relevant understanding of social and health disparities.”

Awarded one year after the center’s official launch in June 2005, the grant caps a busy first year for the center. C2S inaugurated its colloquium series in October 2005, with speaker Dr. Janice Kiecolt-Glaser of Ohio State University; launched a nationwide search for two permanent faculty members; and held its first Biomarker Institute this June.

The R21 grant will support C2S’s development in three key research areas: social disparities, stress, and health; families, interpersonal relationships, and health; and developmental perspectives on health disparities from conception through adulthood, where many research projects are already under way. It will also help the center to achieve its goal of becoming an international locus for biomarker training and research.

Biomarker Institute and Training

Interest in and use of field-friendly biomarkers of physiological and health processes has been growing in population-based studies. Yet many factors from storage and transportation to measurement and timing affect their success.

“Biomarkers appear so easy to use that everyone wants to do it,” said IPR Faculty Fellow Emma Adam, an assistant professor of human development and social policy. “But as it turns out, it is exceptionally complicated to do well.” Very few researchers possess the dual expertise in the social and biomedical sciences to use them effectively, she continued.

From left: Emma Adam, Thomas McDade, and Christopher Kuzawa participate in a C2S conference

Adam and IPR Faculty Fellows Christopher Kuzawa and Thomas McDade, who directs the Laboratory for Human Biology Research at Northwestern, have met with much success in developing these methods and tools in their own research. They have used biomarkers for measures of stress, reproductive function, and cardiovascular health in diverse locations from the United States to Bolivia to the Philippines. As recognized experts, they have been sought out by researchers for advice and consultation. Now their aim is to share what they have learned with others.

The first C2S Summer Biomarker Institute took place from June 19 to 21 and welcomed 22 participants. McDade, an associate professor of anthropology, qualified it as a “nuts-and-bolts, hands-on, full review of state-of-the-art, minimally invasive methods for measuring aspects of physiology and health in population-based settings outside of the lab.”

In addition to supporting future summer institutes, the R21 award will also support a Methodology Core run by McDade, Kuzawa, and Adam. The core will promote research into new biomarkers and enhance Northwestern’s infrastructure to support increased demand for biomarker analysis and usage. “We want to become a national resource for biomarker analyses and their implementation into a broad social science agenda,” McDade said.

The R21 award will establish a seed-grant program to promote the use of biomarkers and other innovative methods in population- and community-based research projects. Since review panels often question the feasibility of collecting blood spots, saliva, and other biomarker methods in largescale research, the seed fund would permit C2S faculty to conduct biomarker validation and pilot studies. In turn, this would hopefully multiply the number of biomarker options and projects using biomarkers properly. “There’s a lot of recognition right now that these methods are opening up new opportunities for social scientists and population researchers,” said Kuzawa, an assistant professor of anthropology.

Interdisciplinary and Innovative Research

Part of C2S’s appeal is its unique approach in trying to understand how social contexts get “under the skin” and influence the pathways and processes of human development, health, and well-being. Noted one grant reviewer, “the ambitious and pioneering set of activities … hold the promise of gaining a more sophisticated understanding of the links and mediators between the social and physical environment and population health.”

Said Adam, “We have learned a lot in the lab, but it doesn’t tell us about stress exposure and how real-life stressors translate into biology. The powerful influence of social variables on developmental, physiological, and health outcomes across the lifecourse deserves greater recognition.”

Much of this new vision of research will come through C2S’s interdisciplinary approach, modeled on IPR’s mission and bolstered by Northwestern’s commitment to crossdisciplinary collaboration. “Research conducted in silos is not where the field should be going,” Chase-Lansdale said. “C2S is at the forefront of the integrative, multi-method, interdisciplinary approach to population health research called for by the NIH Roadmap.”

Already, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists are collaborating with biomedical and life scientists on C2S research projects. “If you truly want to understand human biology and health, you need to have an interdisciplinary perspective that matches the complexity of the human organism,” McDade said.

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For more information about C2S, please visit the center’s Web pages at www.northwestern.edu/ipr/c2s.