PDB Research Programs

Program Official: Juanita Chinn

The scope of branch-supported research in the biopsychosocial program includes the integration of social science, behavioral, and biomedical approaches to understanding health.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Integrative theories and methodologies to advance population sciences
• Collection of biomarkers in population-representative surveys
• Population-level studies of gene-environment interactions
• Role of influences beyond the family on epigenetic changes

Program Official: Rebecca Clark

Data sharing refers to documenting, archiving, and disseminating data within the scope of branch-supported projects.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Ensuring human subjects' protections and privacy
• Integrating data collected at several levels and/or through multiple modalities
• Facilitating adherence to NIH policies, including genome-wide association studies and genomic data sharing

For more information, please visit the Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR) page.

Program Official: Juanita Chinn

This research program examines interrelations between demographic processes and health and the health of populations, with a particular focus on children and families.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Trends in population health
• Disparities in health, development, and productivity
• Effects of population-level interventions on health
• Relationship between population composition  and health
• Health disparities and factors related to increasing or mitigating them
• Mechanisms through which differences in health outcomes operate
• Effects of health including mortality and morbidity on income and well-being
• Human capital, education, and labor force participation and health
• Methods to advance research on:
  • Measurement and analysis of health status at aggregate levels
  • Temporal patterns of health and disease
  • Spatial distributions of health and disease

Program Official: Rebecca Clark

Families, Health, and Productivity

Within the context of families, health, and productivity, the scope of branch-supported projects includes natural and other experiments and population-representative studies of the relations between family processes and structure and the health, development, and productivity of the family.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Division of labor in families and households
• Work/family interactions
• Parenting and parental involvement
• Family investment in children
• Transition to adulthood
• Development of human capital
• Population indicators, trends, and differences in the health, well-being, and productivity of children

Family Demography, Nuptiality, and Intergenerational Processes

For the branch, the scope of this type of research includes population-representative studies of determinants and consequences of change to family demography, nuptuality, and intergenerational processes.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Marriage, cohabitation, and divorce
• Household formation and dissolution
• Family structure and household composition
• Population trends and differentials related to families and households
• Family and social context influences on child well-being, health, and development from birth through young adulthood
• Intergenerational transfers and the health, productivity, and well-being of individuals

Adoption

This program examines adoption as a population-level phenomenon health.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Adoption, biological fertility, and infertility treatments as complements to or substitutes for each other
• Social, economic, and other processes related to adoption and kinship
• Social, cultural, psychological, and biological factors and processes that influence understandings of kinship, including meanings assigned to genetics and adoption

Data Collection

For this program, data collection refers to collection and dissemination of population-representative data on children, parents, and families for secondary analysis.

Program Official: Ronna Popkin

This program examines the social, institutional, economic, and cultural contexts and processes that influence the quantity, timing, and circumstances of childbearing, as well as trends, differences, and characteristics across populations.

Fertility

Areas of interest related to fertility include:

• Fertility in relation to other life course domains and trajectories, such as education, work, residential mobility, health, and the timing and characteristics of romantic unions
• Social, economic, cultural, psychological, and biological factors and processes that influence fertility intentions and behavior
• Consequences of the quantity, timing, and circumstances of childbearing for the well-being of families, communities, and societies

Infertility

Areas of interest related to infertility include:

• Diminished fecundity and variations in pregnancy attainment, characteristics, and resolution
• Help-seeking and diagnosis patterns and processes
• Treatment access and decision-making
• Short- and long-term consequences of infertility or infertility-associated treatment for women, men, couples, and children
• Social, economic, and other factors that generate disparities in infertility and infertility treatment

Adoption and Kinship

Within this program, adoption and kinship research is relevant as components of population dynamics, such as family formation patterns and understandings of demographic groups.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Adoption, biological fertility, and infertility treatments as complements to or substitutes for each other
• Social, economic, and other processes related to adoption and kinship
• Social, cultural, psychological, and biological factors and processes that influence understandings of kinship, including meanings assigned to genetics and adoption

Program Official: Juanita Chinn

The scope of projects within this program includes trajectories of health and mortality from pre-pregnancy through the reproductive years, including birth outcomes, childhood and adolescence, transition to adulthood, and middle age, as well as transgenerational influences on health.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Interrelationships between fertility, fecundity, and health
• Interrelationships between assisted reproductive technologies and health
• Downstream effects of early intervention programs on later health outcomes
• Dynamic influences of the social, institutional, cultural, and physical environments over the life course
• Work-family conflict and health

Health promotion interventions that take place within the workplace, but that are unconnected to family processes are outside the scope of the branch's program.

Program Official: Juanita Chinn

“Population composition” refers to research on the factors affecting the composition of the U.S. population, as well as on population health and health disparities.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Differences in health, social, and demographic processes and outcomes
• Mechanisms through which similarities and differences operate

Program Official: Rebecca Clark

This program encourages research on health and health-related outcomes associated with the allocation of family resources, within and across generations.

Areas of potential interest include:

• Effects of public programs on family behavior and child development
• Impact of child care arrangements on labor supply
• Evaluations of the impact of changes in state and federal programs on child health and development
• Interrelationships between health and economic status, including issues related to wealth, poverty, productivity, human capital development, and economic development
• Evaluations of population-level interventions to improve the health and well-being of children
• Provider-level and regional variation in health expenditures, services, and health-related outcomes for children and adolescents

Program Official: Rebecca Clark

The scope of these types of studies within the program includes representative studies of population mobility and its consequences and spatial dimensions of health and population change.

Specific areas of interest include:

• Effects of population mobility on population health
• Causes and consequences of population mobility
• Interactions between health and mobility
• Mobility and infectious disease transmission
• Health and place
• Effects of environmental changes on population health
• Reciprocal influences of population and environmental change
• Effects of population mobility on:
  • Sending and receiving communities, domestically and internationally
  • Other components of demographic change, such as fertility
• Methodological research on improving data collection, analysis, and estimation related to population mobility
• Applications of spatial econometrics and other methods to demographic processes

Individual or family-level interventions related to population mobility are not within the scope of the branch's research in this program.

Program Official: Ronna Popkin

The scope of research within this program includes:

• Human reproductive health, including the use and non-use of methods of pregnancy prevention, and the attainment of desired pregnancy
• Social and behavioral interventions designed to improve reproductive health, including reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), such as HIV, and increasing STI testing and treatment
• Social and behavioral research on reproductive health (including STIs and HIV) using population representative samples

Research areas of interest include the following:

• Interrelationships between pregnancy prevention and disease prevention
• Behaviors related to the risk of pregnancy or the risk of STIs
• Interrelationships among structural, population-level, and individual factors and characteristics that affect reproductive health (including STI/HIV risk and transmission)
• The design, implementation, and evaluation of theoretically grounded interventions for both individuals and providers designed to improve reproductive health (including reducing STI/HIV transmission, increasing STI/HIV testing, and improving medical adherence related to STIs and HIV)
• Consequences of behavior-based strategies related to reproductive health, such as STI/HIV prevention strategies, as well as STI/HIV infection on individual well-being, interpersonal relationships, reproductive outcomes, and the well-being of families, communities, and society
• Methodologies and measures to improve studies of reproductive health, including developing reliable and unbiased measures, data collection methods that improve validity of self-reports, and methods for validation of self-report data