Pilot Grant Program

The LCC pilot grant program nurtures the development of interdisciplinary collaborations and encourages innovative research on the demography and economics of aging. Support from our pilot grant program encourages the vibrant LCC research community and external network to prioritize and pursue pressing population-based questions related to later life course health and well-being through improved understanding of social and economic contexts, disparities, and social participation.

As part of this initiative, we request new proposals annually. 

See projects from previous years.

 

Currently Funded Projects

Picture of Michael Esposito

Picture of Michael Esposito

Picture of Jessica Finlay

Picture of Jessica Finlay

Place-Based Determinants of Cognitive Aging Across the Life Course

Michael Esposito, Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of Minnesota
Jessica Finlay, Assistant Professor, Geography, University of Colorado – Boulder

While disparities in Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) are well documented, the underlying causal process explaining how and why these inequalities arise is less clear. Evidence suggests that potentially-modifiable individual factors, such as social isolation and physical inactivity, can significantly reduce one’s dementia risk. Much less attention, however, focuses on the upstream, contextual factors that structure people’s access to these risk factors and behaviors. Neighborhood amenities that facilitate socialization, learning, healthy eating, and physical activity may slow rates of cognitive decline, while exposure to highways and polluting sites may increase risk for AD/ADRD. Drs. Finlay and Esposito developed a novel concept of Cognability to identify how neighborhood built and social environments structure opportunities and barriers for later-life cognitive health. This proposal aims to extend Cognability to identify how the accumulation of neighborhood exposures over the adult life course may modify cognitive aging trajectories.


LCC Themes: Later Life-Course Population Trends in Context and Life-Course Dynamics as Disparity Mechanisms

Picture of Shekinah Fashaw-Walters

Picture of Shekinah Fashaw-Walters

Picture of Quinton Cotton

Picture of Quinton Cotton

Qualitative Research to Quantify Exposures to Racism among Older Adults

Shekinah Fashaw-Walters, Assistant Professor, Health Policy & Management, University of Minnesota 
Quinton Cotton, Postdoctoral Fellow, Health Policy & Management, University of Minnesota

The overall objective of this pilot project is to identify through qualitative inquiry the elements of racism across the life course that affect healthy aging and healthcare experiences for Black older adults. Black older adults have worse health outcomes and poorer access to high-quality healthcare services as compared to their white counterparts. Emerging evidence documents the role of community and social factors (i.e., racism, segregation, structural poverty) in healthy aging processes and access to healthcare. However, little is known about the specific impacts of exposure to racism over the life course on healthy aging. Our work will explore and elucidate how multiple systems and institutions of structural discrimination (including within healthcare) can lead to widened racial inequities in healthy aging. Furthermore, we will explore how factors of resistance and resilience (e.g., familial and cultural factors) moderate the impact of racism on healthy aging. We will sample Black older adults ages 50 and above in the Midwest (Minneapolis, Minnesota) and anticipate reaching data saturation with 24 participants.


LCC Theme: Life-Course Dynamics as Disparity Mechanisms

Picture of Naomi Thyden

Picture of Naomi Thyden

Japanese American Health by Generational Status and Exposure to Structural Racism

Naomi Thyden, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, University of Minnesota

Although Asian American interest groups have worked against health disparities in their communities for decades, there are now broader calls for more data about Asian Americans, including data disaggregated by ethnicity. At the same time, structural racism has become accepted as a driving force of racial health disparities. There is a long history of discriminatory policies against Asian Americans, and specifically against Japanese Americans. Most notably, the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II is a racial trauma whose health effects have been insufficiently documented. The effects of indiscriminate incarceration of Japanese residents have implications for today’s federal policies, which include ethnic-based detention centers and blurred lines between criminal and immigration law - termed “crimmigration.” Because Japanese Americans have been in the U.S. since the 1890s, their experiences can offer insights into the long-term effects of being a minoritized immigrant group in the U.S. In this project we aim to (1) understand differences in self-reported discrimination and well-being among Japanese Americans by internment status and how many generations their family lived in the U.S. and (2) investigate social, demographic, and socioeconomic characteristics of Japanese American internees before incarceration.


LCC Theme: Life-Course Dynamics as Disparity Mechanisms

Picture of Jiao Yu

Picture of Jiao Yu

Neighborhood Characteristics and Cognitive Health among Black and White Older Adults: The Mediation Role of Allostatic Load

Jiao Yu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation, University of Minnesota

This pilot project aims to generate preliminary data to understand how place-based chronic stressors get under the skin to produce racial disparities in cognitive impairment. One indicator of physiological dysregulation that has received increasing attention is allostatic load (AL). Guided by the “weathering” hypothesis and the stress process theory, this study will develop longitudinal measures of physiological dysregulation (AL) from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS, 2006–2016). Through linking the HRS to the National Neighborhood Data Archive (NaNDA), it will also investigate the extent to which AL, as an indicator of physiological response to stress, explains neighborhood-driven racial disparities in later life cognitive health. The project has two aims: (1) Develop a longitudinal measure of allostatic load with a range of biomarkers and examine disparities in the allostatic load trajectories by race, gender, education, and their intersections. (2) Identify racial differences in the relationship between neighborhood characteristics (neighborhood disorder and neighborhood cohesion) and cognitive health trajectories among black and white older adults aged 65 years and older.


LCC Theme: Life-Course Dynamics as Disparity Mechanisms