$3.5M grant funds major study on health disparities linked to childhood factors

University of MarylandSep 11 2024

In the United States, wealthy people live on average 10 years longer than poor people, and Black people can expect to live an average of 5 years less than White people. Now, thanks to a $3.5 million grant, researchers will examine why these disparities persist – and how to address them. Led by University of Maryland SPH Professor Dahai Yue, a research team will gather large-scale historical data to understand and quantify how education and infectious disease in childhood play a role in these stark mortality disparities.

Yue, assistant professor in UMD's Department of Health Policy and Management and associate director at the Center on Aging, earned the grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), together with professors Adriana Lleras-Muney at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Joseph Price at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. 

The team will embark on an extensive study to gather, link and analyze data on the life and death of approximately 20 million people including a large and representative sample of Black people and White people to examine how certain childhood experiences impact longevity. Data will be collected from publicly available censuses from 1890 up to 1940 and from the National Death Index and linked to family tree information in the database of Family Search, a nonprofit genealogy company.

This is the first study to follow a huge sample of people from birth all the way to death, looking at the causal relationship between childhood origins of health and health disparities. To our knowledge, this will be the largest individual-level data-gathering on mortality in the U.S."

Dahai Yue, University of Maryland SPH Professor 

Researchers will measure two key factors – quality of education and the infectious disease environment in childhood – against the age and cause of death of each person. Evidence shows that education and child health both play a significant role in determining someone's longevity, and that there are also substantial variations in these two factors between racial groups and geographical areas. 

"Our hope is that this research will contribute to policies that can improve health equity. And these are two very practical areas where policy-makers can use the results to make equitable decisions," said Yue. 

Jie Chen, Ph.D., chair of the UMD Health Policy and Management Department and director of UMD's Center on Aging, also an investigator on the project, notes that the data-gathering element of the grant will in itself be a huge contribution to aging research. 

"This innovative research and the new datasets it will reveal on health, education, life expectancy and race will be invaluable resources for scientists, policy-makers and practitioners," Chen said. "It's a great example of what the Center on Aging is doing." 

This research is funded under NIH grant: R01AG088639.