Archives: News

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Carolina Population Center has received two grants, providing an expected $38.2 million over 5 years, that together will fund Wave VI of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Now entering its 28^th year of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, Add Health is the largest, most comprehensive, nationally representative and longitudinal study of the health of adolescents who have now aged into adulthood ever undertaken in the United States. 

The new grants, funded primarily by the National Institute on Aging with co-funding from five other NIH institutes and offices, will enable researchers to follow the original adolescent cohort into their 40s with a sixth wave of data collection and dissemination. This 5-year project will focus on the cognitive, mental, and physical health of Add Health participants, with particular attention given to disparities in health across racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender subgroups of the population.

Allison Aiello, the new Deputy Director of Add Health and a Professor of Epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health notes, “Research on the early signs and symptoms of health conditions that usually manifest in older age, such as cognitive impairment, age-related loss of physical functioning, and dementia, are rarely studied in early midlife, particularly at the national level. The new measures of cognitive and physical functioning in Wave VI will provide an opportunity for researchers to study the accumulation of risk or preventative factors for later-life health, decades before conditions emerge in older age. These measures may provide new insights on ways to slow down or prevent age-related conditions.”

Since 1994, Add Health has provided the data for more than 3,500 scientific papers in the social, health, policy, and medical sciences. Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological and physical well-being with contextual data on their family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships, thus providing unique opportunities to study how social environments and behaviors are linked to health and socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood.

Among many of the papers published to date, foundational studies based on Add Health data have helped document how the obesity epidemic has unfolded in the United States, brought the silent epidemic of largely undetected high blood pressure in young adults into public awareness, and pioneered work on how the social environment interacts with genetic markers to influence behavior and health in adulthood. Add Health data have also been instrumental in helping the scientific community better understand health disparities across subgroups of the U.S. population. The new wave of data will inform current trends, including rising health risks in middle-age and participants’ exposure to COVID-19.

A new wave begins

Starting in 2021, the five-year project will collect a new sixth round of social and biological data from as many of the original 20,000+ respondents as possible, who live in all 50 states, when they are in their mid-40s. Together with existing Add Health data collected over the past 25+ years, the scientific community will be able to investigate an invaluable longitudinal record of the Add Health cohort through the fifth decade of life.

The study’s new director, Robert Hummer, is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Department of Sociology. Professor Kathleen Mullan Harris, the James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology, who served as the director of Add Health from 2004 to 2021, stated that “the new wave of data collection will advance knowledge for how early life—during adolescence and young adulthood—matters for health and well-being in midlife, and will provide substantial additional payoff for the huge investment that NIH has made in Add Health over the past 25+ years.”

Dr. Harris will continue to serve as one of the study’s research investigators for the next five years.

The new funding from NIA and other NIH institutes and offices will also allow researchers to better understand how adolescent experiences and environments help shape the health and social experiences of individuals as they move into the middle adult years and beyond.

A team effort to create data

The team of Add Health researchers includes sociologists, psychologists, epidemiologists, geneticists, physicians, and research methodologists. They work in collaboration with each other to design the study, collect the data, and make the data available to thousands of researchers all over the world.

Add Health Director Robert Hummer noted that the team of staff members, postdoctoral researchers, and students who work on the study are dedicated to producing data that will create new scientific knowledge about the health of our society.

“It’s extremely unique that scientists across such a breadth of disciplines all collaborate together on Add Health,” he said. “The Carolina Population Center has created an environment for such ‘team science’ to thrive.”

The Add Health team based at the Carolina Population Center at UNC will work in close collaboration with their 20,000+ participants, as well as study collaborators at RTI International, the University of Vermont, and Exam One, in addition to their funders at the NIH.

“Add Health has evolved because of a trusted, lengthy partnership between researchers, participants, and funders,” says Hummer. “It’s really astounding how this ground-up effort has evolved over many decades, and continues to impact the way we understand human health and health disparities in the United States.”

The awards are supported by NIH grants U01AG071448 and U01AG071450. U01AG071450 is co-funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), and the NIH/OD Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives, Office of Disease Prevention (ODP) as well as the NIH/OD Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR).

The following data are now available to Add Health contract researchers.

HUD-Assisted Housing Supplemental Data.

The supplementary data-file identifies Add Health respondents who lived in HUD-assisted housing at any point between 1995 and 2017. For these Add Health respondents, the supplementary data-file provides unique Add Health respondent identifiers (AID) and household-level information about the characteristics of their HUD housing residence. The supplementary data-file is a hierarchical (i.e., long-format data file), with each row representing a unique HUD administrative record that is linked to an AID. In total, the hierarchical file includes a total of 8,587 HUD records on 1,159 unique Add Health respondents identified through the linkage. N=8,587

This data-file has special requirements for access, please see requirements listed on the CPC Data Portal.

Current Add Health investigators can log in to the CPC Data Portal and use the “Request More Data” button to order this dataset.

For more information on the CPC Data Portal, please visit the Frequently Asked Questions page. 

Linkages between microbiota and physiologic aging and age-related disease have typically been examined in older adults.  However, recent evidence indicates biological aging likely begins as early as the 30s, especially when it comes to immune and metabolic biomarker abnormalities. Understanding how gut microbiota and markers of immune and metabolic aging are connected earlier in the life course may help us understand their influence on health later in life.  Researchers recently utilized Add Health data in order to study these connections. 

Audrey Renson et al. analyzed biomarker, fecal micriobiome, and gene expression data from Waves IV and V of Add Health – when participants were between the ages of 24 and 42 – to study early adulthood associations between gut microbiome and the hallmarks of aging and immunity. By simultaneously examining biomarkers associated with interconnected aging mechanisms of metabolism, macromolecular damage, inflammation, and immunosenescence with transcriptomic markers of aging, Renson et al. found specific taxa potentially involved in the cellular aging process and thus age-related disease. These findings suggest specific microbiota may lead to cellular influences earlier than previously found. Interventions on gut microbiome earlier in life, be it through vaccines, probiotic supplements, or diet changes, may prevent unnecessary premature aging.

Due to its longitudinal design, the Add Health data from Wave I-V provide the data for researchers to develop a clearer picture of how health throughout the life course is affected by demographics, social and familial environments, behavior, biomarkers, anthropometric measures, and genetics. Microbiome and gene expression data release for contract users is forthcoming.

Authors:

Audrey Renson, MPH

Kathleen Mullan Harris, PhD

Jennifer B Dowd, PhD

Lauren Gaydosh, PhD

Matthew B. McQueen, ScD

Kenneth S. Krauter, PhD

Michael Shannahan, Prof. Dr.

Allison E. Aiello, PhD

Audrey Renson, MPH, Kathleen Mullan Harris, PhD, Jennifer B Dowd, PhD, Lauren Gaydosh, PhD, Matthew B McQueen, ScD, Kenneth S Krauter, PhD, Michael Shannahan, Prof. Dr., Allison E Aiello, PhD, Early Signs of Gut Microbiome Aging: Biomarkers of Inflammation, Metabolism, and Macromolecular Damage in Young Adulthood, The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Volume 75, Issue 7, July 2020, Pages 1258–1266, https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glaa122

Health disparities in depressive symptoms have been well researched with regard to gender and race/ethnicity. However, few studies have examined how the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender may impact depressive symptoms over the life span. With four decades of data available, Dr. Taylor Hargrove et al. utilize Wave I-IV of Add Health data along with a representative subsample of the newly released Wave V data set to analyze how these intersecting characteristics affect mental health. Their study sought to answer the following questions:

(1) To what extent do racial/ethnic inequalities in depressive symptoms vary by gender?

(2) Do the intersections of race/ethnicity and gender result in widening, narrowing, or stable disparities in mental health from adolescence to the beginning of midlife (ages 12–42)?

Dr. Hargrove found that women reported more depressive symptoms than men, and racial/ethnic minorities reported more depressive symptoms than their White peers. Results also exposed a difference in depression symptoms by race/ethnicity within each gender group and at varying times in the life course. Overall, depressive symptoms in women dramatically increased in their late 30s, while Black, Asian, and Hispanic women reported more symptoms than White women. Black and Asian American women were the most vulnerable groups, reporting the highest level of depressive symptoms over the greatest amount of time. With the addition of the Wave V subsample, Dr. Hargrove and her team found dynamic inequalities over more of the life course than previously reported. By highlighting these vulnerable populations and understanding the age trajectories for depressive symptoms, it is easier to determine when interventions would be best suited in the life course. 

Add Health Wave V data sets are available via restricted-use data contract. 

Authors

Citation

Hargrove, T.W., Halpern, C.T., Gaydosh, L. et al. Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms Across Early- and Mid-Life Among the Add Health Cohort. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 7, 619–629 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-019-00692-8

Research has shown that migraines are the fifth leading cause of emergency room visits in the U.S., with one in six adults suffering from migraines. Although it is recognized that the LGBTQ community experience an array of discrimination when seeking health care, there has been a lack of investigation into migraine prevalence among non-heterosexual persons at the national level. Using the recently released Add Health Wave V survey data, Dr. Jason Nagata’s findings show that sexual minority adults are more likely to suffer from migraines compared to heterosexual adults. It may be in part due to an increase in stress from acute discrimination and prejudice that sexual minorities experience, in addition to barriers to physical and mental healthcare which further exacerbate the problem. Dr. Nagata and his research team also found that those who identify as mostly-heterosexual were at higher risk for migraine than those who identified as exclusively heterosexual.

Add Health Wave V data sets are available via restricted-use data contract.  The survey questions used for this analysis include the following migraine question:

“Have you ever had five or more headaches that were at least four hours long; one-sided, pulsating, intense, or worsened by activity; and associated with nausea, vomiting, or sensitivity to light or sound?” This question is consistent with the International Classification of Headache Disorders third edition diagnostic criteria for migraine without aura.

Authors:

Dr. Jason M. Nagata

Dr. Kyle T. Ganson

Dr. Jennifer Tabler

Dr. Aaron J. Blashill

Dr. Stuart B. Murray

Citation: Nagata JM, Ganson KT, Tabler J, Blashill AJ, Murray SB. Disparities Across Sexual Orientation in Migraine Among US Adults. JAMA Neurol. Published online September 28, 2020. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.3406

Article: https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.3406

Students with chronic medical conditions struggle with more than just their physical health. The hurdles formed from medical conditions impact their school attendance, concentration, and the expectations of their parents and teachers.   Around one-third of students suffering from chronic medical conditions experience symptoms so severe that it interferes with their schooling on a daily basis.  A sense of belonging is a basic human need, and a primary source of this belonging for adolescents come from their school community. Researcher Dr. Kathryn M. Kirkpatrick analyzed the restricted-use Add Health data to compare adolescents with chronic health conditions with their healthy peers to determine the impact of school belonging on their education. She found that the students with chronic medical conditions not only reported a lower sense of school belonging but were also less likely to graduate on time. Additionally, Dr. Kirkpatrick found that while school connectedness is important to all students, it has a stronger impact on those with medical conditions. 

Students with chronic medical conditions regularly report more feelings of loneliness and isolation with less school satisfaction, academic achievement, and motivation.  High-risk students may need more cultivated opportunities to engage with their instructors and peers to create a stronger sense of belonging. These findings contribute to both the fields of education and psychology, offering ways in which teachers can understand and promote a stronger feeling of perceived connectedness for all their students resulting in higher academic attainment for all.

Authors:

Dr. Kathryn M. Kirkpatrick

Citation:

Kirkpatrick, K. M. (2020). Adolescents with Chronic Medical Conditions and High School Completion: The Importance of Perceived School Belonging. Continuity in Education, 1(1), pp. 50–63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/cie.5

Add Health data collection began 25 years ago, yet new research is still being published using Wave I data which adds to the scientific knowledge of adolescent health. A recent study by Boyd, Quinn, and Aquino titled The Inescapable Effects of Parent Support on Black Males and HIV Testing sought to understand what factors influence HIV testing in adolescence.

The study applied the ecodevelopmental theory to understand whether family context, including parent support and parent relationships, impacted HIV testing for Black adolescent males. Waves I and III Add Health data allowed researchers to account for self-efficacy, peers’ knowledge and influence of sexual behaviors, the participants’ perception of risk of contracting the AIDS virus, and parental support.

The findings support the hypothesis that parental communication positively influences HIV-related behaviors including getting tested for HIV. Results also showed that if parents had positive attitudes about sex, adolescents were twice as likely to get tested for HIV. Other associated factors of HIV testing among Black males included self-efficacy, peer knowledge, and participant attitudes of sex. The authors suggest that future HIV-related interventions among Black adolescents should promote positive communication skills. You can read more about the findings and discussion here.

Authors:

Donte T. Boyd, University of Houston

Camille R. Quinn, Ohio State University

Gabrielle A. Aquino, University of Houston

Citation:

Boyd, Donte T., Quinn, Camille R., & Aquino, Gabrielle A. (2020). The Inescapable Effects of Parent Support on Black Males and HIV Testing. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

Add Health collected information on nutrition, eating habits and weight perception during the Wave I interview when respondents were in middle and high school. These questions were repeated during four waves of data collection, allowing researchers to explore pathways involving eating disorders. Four Add Health based studies published in 2019 focus on mechanisms of eating disorders that can inform programs and interventions.

Fergus, Copp, Tabler, & Nagata evaluated the association between eating disorders and sexual risk in young women – specifically sexually active, unmarried women. Results shows that young women with eating disorders have an increased number of new sexual partners and unprotected sex when compared to non-eating disordered peers. However, there was not an association with STI. These results may inform future screening and clinical management.

Hazzard, Bauer, Mukherjee, Miller, & Sonneville investigated the associations between types of childhood maltreatment and eating disorder symptoms in young adulthood. Researchers found that different eating disorder behaviors were associated with different categories of maltreatment. For example, participants labeled as “multi-type maltreatment” were more likely to report binge eating and fasting. Authors advocate for accurately developing childhood maltreatment profiles in order to identify high-risk groups for eating disorders.

Nagata, Braudt, Domingue, Bibbins-Domingo, Garber, Griffiths, & Murray used the polygenic score (PGS) for BMI to assess the genetic risk for BMI and weight control behaviors in young adults.  Their study found that actual BMI mediated the relationship between BMI genetic risk and weight loss behaviors. Though this study did not specifically focus on eating disorders, their work may provide some insight for clinical interventions to prevent unhealthy weight loss behaviors.

Arduini, Iorio, & Patacchini explored whether the development of eating disorders are influenced by peers’ body size. Their study showed that teenage girls with thinner female friends have misperceptions of their own weight. The authors comment how these results can influence eating disorder programs and anti-obesity messages.

Citation:

Fergus, K., Copp, H., Tabler, J.l and Nagata, J. (2019) Eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors among  women: Association with sexual risk. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 52(11). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31267548/

Hazzard, V., Bauer, K., Mukherjee, B., Miller, A., and Sonneville, K. (2019) Associations between childhood maltreatment latent classes and eating disorder symptoms in a nationally representative sample of young adults in the United States. Child Abuse and Neglect, 98. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213419303485

Nagata, H., Braudt, D., Domingue, B., Bibbins-Domingo, K., Garber, A., Griffiths, S., and Murray, S. (2019) Genetic risk, body mass index, and weight control behaviors: unlocking the triad. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 52(7). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30994932/

Arduini, T., Iorio, D., and Patacchini, E. (2019) Weight, reference points, and the onset of eating disorders. Journal of Health Economics, 65. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31030114/

Within the context of America’s continuing racial divisions, sociologists from Yale University and Bowling Green State University analyzed Add Health data in order to determine what key contributing factors increase the likelihood of adulthood interracial relationship formation. Despite approval of interracial marriages rising in recent years, there continues to be a strong racial divide in the formation of friendships and romantic relationships, particularly between whites and blacks.  In Interracial Friendships and Romantic Relationships from Adolescence to Adulthood, sociologists, Grace Kao, Kara Joyner, and Kelly Stamper Balistreri, examine the lack of diversity within our school systems and its impact on future racial divides. The authors provide compelling evidence that changes within schools can decrease the racial gap. When adolescents are provided with opportunities to cross racial barriers, allowing interracial friendships to be formed, they are more likely to incur romantic attachments to members of opposing races as adults.

During the mid-1990s, Add Health began following more than 20,000 adolescents, completing both in-school and in-home interviews with these respondents.  Respondents have now been followed over five waves of data collection spanning more than 20 years, providing a wealth of data for longitudinal research.  The early in-school and in-home interviews resulted in a collection of peer network data describing youth respondents’ friendships and relationships which the authors reviewed to better understand the complexity of race among youths. By evaluating contributing factors such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status, Kao et al. discovered interracial contact at a younger age is crucial to the creation of interracial friendships and romantic relationships, both as adolescents and as adults. Their study found that young people that attended a diverse school had a greater likelihood of forming friendships and romantic relationships with those of a different race than their counterparts attending a school lacking in racial diversity. The authors argue that this lack of diversity within schools has a lasting impact on young adults’ social attachments and perpetuates the racial divides in America.

Thanks in part to the data provided by Add Health, Interracial Friendships and Romantic Relationships from Adolescence to Adulthood delivers a strong argument for school diversity and the encouragement of interracial contact at a young age.

---

Citation

Kao, Grace; Joyner, Kara; & Balistreri, Kelly. (Forthcoming). Interracial Romance and Friendship in Adolescence and Adulthood. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Authors

• Grace Kao is IBM Professor of Sociology at Yale University
• Kara Joyner is Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University
• Kelly Stamper Balistreri is Associate Professor of Sociology at Bowling Green State University

Publisher Information  

Published by the Russell Sage Foundation, a social science foundation dedicated to the development of educated responses and improvement of living conditions through an in-depth comprehension of enduring issues within society.  The Company We Keep is a volume in the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series in Sociology. The series is currently published for the ASA by the Russell Sage Foundation.