NICHD

This project analyzes the factors underlying underrepresentation of women in certain STEM fields.  Although there has been substantial male-female wage convergence over time, there remains a persistent gap among college graduates that has been shown to be attributable, in part, to males and females choosing different college majors and occupations.  Majors in applied STEM fields, such as computer science and engineering, are among the highest paid and are also those in which the representation of women is 20% or lower.

The poor suffer disproportionally from poor mental and physical health. Many causes for these disparities have been considered, including low income. But, poor families’ incomes are not only low, but also often unstable and unpredictable. This instability creates uncertainty about whether they will be able to safeguard their future wellbeing.

Concern is increasing about accelerating climate changes and the implications for health and welfare of children. Also, air pollution remains very high in large areas of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Quartet support will permit development of large-scale NIH and NSF applications to investigate how global childhood inequalities shape both (1) risks of climate/environment exposure and (2) implications, once exposed. Specifically, the project will consider possible differences across groups defined by economic status, sociodemographic status, gender, and health/nutrition status.

The proposed research will evaluate the relative influence of genomic, phenotypic, social attributes, and social context in shaping how individuals perceive other people’s race, to determine how genomic information is influencing societal norms of racial classification.

In 2018, 992 people were shot and killed by the police in the United States. Black men are at particularly high risk of deadly police violence relative to other groups. In addition to direct consequences of this violence, studies document a host of spill-over effects of police violence, including decreased trust in the police and increased legal cynicism. Given racial disparities in risk of police violence and a broader context of structural racism in the U.S., the collateral consequences of this violence are magnified for Black communities.

This research will provide new, minimally invasive, field friendly methods of investigating an understudied condition that affects millions of people worldwide, Environmental Enteric Disorder (EED). These methods may provide new diagnostic technologies that can be used for the advancement of public and global health goals, specifically those around the reduction of child malnutrition, to which EED has been shown to contribute.

“Whole Community Climate Mapping”, a collective, interdisciplinary project to create, analyze, and share with the public a household carbon footprint database and climate vulnerability index for the United States of unprecedented spatial resolution, along with a wide range of other social, health, and environmental indicators—all at the neighborhood level. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the root cause of climate change, one of the gravest threats facing humans in the 21st century.

It has been widely documented that low- and middle-income countries are characterized by scarcity of health care resources. Lack of resources at the national level, however, may mask substantial differences in access to health care within countries. In this project we aim to provide answers to three fundamental questions in health care. First, how unequally is access to health care distributed within countries? Second, to what extent can withincountry differences in health care resources explain within-country differences in health outcomes?

This project focuses on quantitatively documenting the causes and consequences of early fertility among Zambian university students. To close the gender gap in educational attainment in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), it is critical to make progress on understanding both the causes and consequences of early fertility. However, while contraception access has increased throughout SSA, qualitative evidence shows barriers on the demand side persist.

Physical pain is a common but largely overlooked and poorly understood aspect of the lives of the poor. With frequent involvement in hard physical labor, uncomfortable living conditions, and limited access to adequate medical care, the poor are particularly likely to experience pain (Poleshuk and Green 2008; Johnson et al. 2013, Tsang et al. 2008). This heavy burden of physical pain is likely to be exacerbated in the coming years as pain increases with age and populations are aging rapidly around the globe (Loeser and Melzack 1999; McBeth and Jones 2007).