Pilot Grant Program

The Cost of Public Good: Health Impacts of Urban Renewal on Hispanic Communities in the Southwest

Rae Anne Martinez - Assistant Professor of Health and Behavioral Sciences, University of Colorado - Denver

During “urban renewal” (1949-1974), the US federal government spent nearly $78 billion (in 2024 dollars) on 2100 municipal projects in approximately 1000 cities that (1) were aimed at clearing residential and industrial “blight” (i.e., slum areas) and (2) were coupled with private redevelopment to encourage economic growth and modernization. However, research on the relationship between urban renewal displacement and health has been limited by a lack of available data on displaced individuals and their subsequent outcomes. This study will use long-run multisource linked census and administrative data to conduct the first individual-level investigation of the consequences of urban renewal displacement for health and aging across the life course, specifically on early mortality and aging related outcomes. The focus of this study is on the displacement of Chavez Ravine residents, whose property was seized by the City of Los Angeles for a public housing project and eventually repurposed for Dodger Stadium. The team will seek to understand how life course timing of displacement (i.e., removal in early, mid, or later life) may result in heterogeneous impacts for these outcomes.

LCC Research Themes: Later life population trends in context and Life course dynamics as disparity mechanisms

The Long Run Impact of Medical School Construction on the Geographic Distribution of Physicians and Health Outcomes

Caitlin Carroll - Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, University of Minnesota 

Thomas Helgerman - Assistant Professor in the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota

Physician shortages, especially in rural areas, are a significant concern to policymakers given the graying of the rural population. The objective of this study is to examine the impact of medical school construction on the local supply of physicians and on local mortality rates with a focus on rural areas. The empirical context is the Health Manpower Policy (HMP), a federal program that provided funding for medical school construction in the 1960s and 1970s and spurred construction at 37 new medical schools. The team will estimate the effect of medical school construction using a difference-in-differences design, in which they compare changes in physician supply and mortality in counties that opened new medical schools to contemporaneous changes in counties that were similar but did not experience a medical school opening. They will also evaluate spillover effects of medical school construction on rural and urban counties that were close to the new school (e.g., in the same state) but did not open a new medical school. This research will provide the first evidence on the long-run consequences of medical school construction and will serve as a model for investigating the effects of more recent (post-2000) medical school construction on health outcomes.

LCC Research Theme: Health care services and supports for an aging population

Understanding Life Course Geographic Contexts and Midlife Cognitive Function in a National Cohort

Emma Zang - Associate Professor of Sociology and Biostatistics and Global Affairs, Yale University

Geographic differences in cognitive outcomes, such as dementia incidence and cognitive decline, are not fully understood. Advancing the science requires deeper consideration of how residential environments, defined by state- and county-level characteristics, across the life course influence later-life cognition. This study will use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), which includes individuals born between 1974 and 1983, to examine how individuals' residential histories across developmental stages relate to cognitive functioning in midlife.  The data include rich cognitive assessments and detailed geographic identifiers, allowing linkage to time- and place-specific contextual measures. The study will contribute to ADRD prevention science by: 1) extending the concept of “residential context trajectories” to a new cohort entering late adulthood, 2) identifying social and demographic predictors of different residential trajectories, 3) evaluating how life course geographic exposures are associated with midlife cognitive performance, 4) investigating variation in these associations across population subgroups defined by sex and other background characteristics.

LCC Themes: Later life population trends in context and Life course dynamics as disparity mechanisms

Examining Early Psychosocial Predictors of Epigenetic Aging Using Longitudinal Data from Adoptive and Non-Adoptive Families

Kristian Markon - Research Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota

Family dynamics, such as warmth of communication and less conflict, may impact epigenetic aging in adulthood and contribute to better health outcomes over the life course. This study will estimate how childhood psychosocial variables measured in late adolescence predict later epigenetic aging as measured using established epigenetic aging markers. The Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (SIBS), an ongoing study at the Minnesota Center For Twin Family Research (MCTFR), provides an ideal opportunity to address these issues. With the offspring now reaching middle age, and the parents reaching late adulthood, SIBS provides an ideal design for studying prospectively how childhood environmental and psychosocial factors come to be associated with epigenetic aging later in maturity. This project will provide essential information about the nature and direction of associations that have so far only been examined retrospectively or in designs with significant confounding variables. Importantly, because variables are measured in adoptive families, they can infer that any observed offspring-parent associations in epigenetic aging can be attributed to shared environmental factors, and that associations between psychosocial variables and later epigenetic aging can be attributed to these shared environmental factors as well.

LCC Research Themes: Life course dynamics as disparity mechanisms and Interrelationships among work, family, community participation, and health