Progress 07/01/16 to 06/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:The main target audiences for this UAES project were scholars and practitioners in public health and the social sciences who are interested in (a) racial/ethnic disparities in obesity, related conditions (e.g., diabetes), and premature mortality, and (b) sleep deficiencies (e.g., poor sleep hygiene or insufficient restorative sleep) and associated health problems, particularly weight gain and obesity. Changes/Problems:This UAES project has concluded; there are no changes or problems to report. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?This UAES project provided outstanding research and professionalization opportunities for Sun Jeon, Carlyn Graham, Amin Etemadifar, Max Roberts, and Olusola Omisakin. Under my direction, Sun Jeon, Amin Etemadifar, and Max Roberts all earned Ph.D. degrees in Sociology from USU, as they simultaneously contributed to key project objectives. Carlyn Graham earned a M.S. degree in Sociology from USU and is now a Ph.D. student at Penn State University. Olusola Omisakin is entering his third year in Sociology's Ph.D. program at USU. With the help of UAES support, all these students have learned how to form hypotheses, analyze data, draw research conclusions, collaborate with scholars in other fields (e.g., medicine, psychology, biostatistics, and epidemiology), and communicate discoveries through academic conferences, peer-reviewed journals, and popular media. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In collaboration with numerous faculty and graduate students at USU, as well as colleagues outside of USU, research from this UAES project has been disseminated at multiple research conferences, peer-reviewed journals, and media outlets. This includes: (1) research conferences for the North Carolina Sociological Association, the Population Association of America, the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, the American Public Health Association, and the Gerontological Society of America; (2) research publications in the American Journal of Sociology, BMC Public Health, Population Health Metrics, Sleep Health, Scientific Reports, and Mathematical Foundations of Computing; and (3) an article in the Washington Post that prominently featured research on black-white disparities in life expectancy in Washington D.C., which I coauthored with Max Roberts and Sojung Lim. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?This UAES project has concluded; there is no future plan of work.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The first objective of this UAES project was to monitor sociodemographic disparities in obesity prevalence and related comorbidities. For this objective, I collaborated with Sun Jeon (former Ph.D. student) to refine obesity classification methods, using public data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. We found that low cost, indirect measures (such as body mass index, or BMI) are as predictive of adverse health outcomes as costlier direct measures (e.g., underwater weighing); this verified that BMI is an adequate tool to monitor sociodemographic disparities in obesity. In addition, I contributed to several methodological studies on age-period-cohort (APC) modeling techniques, which are useful tools in understanding how the prevalence of obesity has changed in recent decades. These included: (1) a collaborative effort with Sun Jeon, Ken Land (Duke), and other APC scholars to identify assumptions routinely violated when using the intrinsic estimator (IE) method. We found that the IE recovers true APC trends in data when basic assumptions are satisfied; (2) simulation studies of hierarchical APC models to evaluate the effectiveness of this method, commonly used in obesity research; (3) research with colleagues in Canada, Hong Kong, and the U.S. to complete a mathematical and statistical assessment of the IE approach to estimating APC models of rate data, including population health outcomes such as obesity and mortality rates. As in our prior research, we found that the IE method is a valid and reliable estimator of APC models. In other research, I worked with two graduate students (Olusola Omisakin and Max Roberts) and two USU faculty members (Hyojun Park and Sojung Lim) to study changes in obesity-related comorbidities such as diabetes and heart disease in various areas of the U.S., including Utah. We found considerable racial/ethnic disparities in obesity-related causes of mortality in all these states, with implications for other study objectives (e.g., consequences of obesity). The second objective of this UAES project was to examine behavioral and biological origins of obesity disparities. The most significant accomplishment toward this objective was research addressing longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics and obesity in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (WSCS), which was supported by a $2.1 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Since the start of this NIH award in 2017, I have devoted much effort to (1) managing a team of scientists at Stanford University, who completed bioassays of blood samples of WSCS participants, and (2) collaborating with scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to conduct longitudinal data analyses using multilevel models to separate within- and between-person associations between markers of restorative sleep, sleep duration, and body habitus. Through these analyses we found that sleep differentials (i.e., differences between weekday and weekend sleep duration) contribute to weight gain and obesity, and within-person changes and between-person differences in restorative (i.e., rapid-eye-movement and stage 3) sleep contribute to weight gain during mid-to-late life. These findings have strengthened scientific evidence regarding sleep as a contributor to obesity in adulthood, as previous literature was plagued by contradictory findings. In another study on objective 2, I collaborated with a former M.S. student (Carlyn Graham) and USU faculty members Gabriele Ciciurkaite and Jamison Fargo to study sociodemographic and neighborhood contributors to poor sleep hygiene among young children, which is important to the etiology of obesity, using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS). Through our analyses of data from the kindergarten cohort of the ECLS, we found that racial/ethnic identification among parents and neighborhood conditions (e.g., social disorder) independently contribute to late bedtimes among U.S. kindergarteners. For the third project objective (tracing the health consequences of obesity disparities), I worked with USU graduate students and faculty members to decompose racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy into various causes of death, including consequences stemming from obesity (e.g., diabetes and heart disease). For example, former Ph.D. student Max Roberts, Sojung Lim (USU faculty) and I found that obesity-related conditions such as diabetes and heart disease explain a sizable portion of black-white differences in life expectancy in Washington D.C. and the state of Wisconsin. In follow-up analyses, Max Roberts and I also discovered that heart disease contributes most to Black-white longevity gaps in the U.S. at all education levels except for those without a high school diploma. Additionally, we found that low rates of heart disease among Hispanics creates a longevity advantage for across all levels of education, relative to non-Hispanic whites. Finally, Ryan Masters (CU-Boulder) and I assessed estimation methods for population-attributable fractions (PAFs) for various causes of mortality. This relates to the third study objective, as prior studies using different PAF methods have disagreed sharply about the proportion of U.S. mortality that is attributable to obesity. Our research showed that traditional methods of PAF estimation have led to substantial underestimation of obesity as a cause of mortality.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Conference Proceedings
Hagen, E. W., Reither, E. N., Barnet, J. H., & Peppard, P. E. (2018). Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Associations of Polysomnographically-assessed Sleep Quality with Body Mass and Central Adiposity in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study. (suppl_1 ed., vol. 41, pp. A275-A276). SLEEP.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Graham, C., Reither, E. N., Ciciurkaite, G., Dev, D. A., & Fargo, J. (2020, October 01). Does context matter? A multilevel analysis of neighborhood disadvantage and children's sleep health. Sleep Health, 6(5), 578-586.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Roberts, M. T., Reither, E. N., & Lim, S.-J. (2020, August 27). Contributors to the black-white life expectancy gap in Washington D.C. Scientific Reports, 10, 13416.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Presentations
Hagen, E. W., Reither, E. N., Barnet, J. H., P, P. E., SLEEP 2018, the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, "Comparison of Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Associations of Polysomnographically-assessed Sleep Quality with Body Mass and Central Adiposity," Baltimore, Maryland. (June 2018)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Presentations
Roberts, M. T., Reither, E. N., Lim, S., Population Association of America, "Contributors to Wisconsin's Persistent Black-White Gap in Life Expectancy," Denver, Colorado. (April 2018)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Presentations
Reiter, E. M., Reither, E. N., The North Carolina Sociological Association Annual Meeting, "The Impact of Psychosocial Factors on Racial Disparities in Type II Diabetes," Fayetteville, North Carolina. (February 2018)
|
Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:The main target audience during this reporting period was scholars and practitioners in public health and the social sciences who are interested in (a) insufficient sleep and associated problems (e.g., obesity) during early childhood and mid-to-late life, and (b) racial/ethnic disparities in health and longevity. Changes/Problems:I do not anticipate any notable changes or problems to my UAES objectives between now and the project end date. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In 2020, my UAES project provided excellent research training and professional development opportunities for three graduate students in Sociology; Amin Etemadifar, Ph.D. student; Max Roberts, Ph.D. student; and Olusola Omisakin, Ph.D. student. Mr. Roberts and Mr. Omisakin have contributed to my ongoing program of research focusing on obesity-related contributors to racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy. Through these UAES activities, Mr. Roberts published a peer-reviewed manuscript in 2020; this and other accomplishments resulted in Mr. Roberts winning the Doctoral Researcher of the Year award in Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology. Mr. Omisakin is looking forward to opportunities to present his research and is about to submit his first peer-reviewed manuscript. These experiences have provided outstanding training and networking opportunities for both students. In addition, Mr. Etemadifar is comparing "deaths of despair" (e.g., opioid- and self-harm related mortality) to obesity-related contributors to recent declines in U.S. life expectancy. These issues will form the core of Mr. Etemadifar's Ph.D. dissertation in Sociology, which he is slated to complete in early 2021. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In November 2020, I disseminated UAES-related research on associations between restorative sleep and changes in body mass at a virtual conference hosted by the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). Unfortunately, other conference activities were cancelled as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the GSA presentation, I disseminated research in 2020 by publishing manuscripts in three peer-reviewed journals. The first study, entitled "Does context matter? A multilevel analysis of neighborhood disadvantage and children's sleep health," was published in Sleep Health in June, 2020. The second manuscript, entitled "Contributors to the black-white life expectancy gap in Washington D.C.," was published in Scientific Reports in August, 2020. This manuscript received considerable media attention, including a feature article in the Washington Post, which contributed to the dissemination of our main research findings. The third manuscript, entitled "The uses and abuses of an age-period-cohort method: on the linear algebra and statistical properties of intrinsic and related estimators," was accepted for publication in Mathematical Foundations of Computing and will appear either in late 2020 or early 2021. The first two manuscripts were coauthored with USU graduate students and faculty. The third manuscript was coauthored with an international team of colleagues. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Between now and the end date for this UAES project on June 30 2021, I plan to continue working on NIH-funded research on sleep-obesity associations, which are strongly related to my second UAES project objective. This will include analyses of appetite-regulating hormones that are theorized to act as mediating variables between sleep disruption and weight gain. In addition, I will continue working with Ph.D. graduate students in Sociology to complete ongoing studies on (a) "deaths of despair" versus obesity-related conditions (e.g., heart disease and diabetes) as contributors to stagnating life expectancy in the U.S., and (b) the effects of obesity-related conditions on racial/ethnic disparities in longevity. This list is not exhaustive, but I anticipate that these projects will occupy most of my research time over the next few months.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the past year, my research activities have addressed all three project objectives, namely (1) monitoring sociodemographic disparities in obesity prevalence and related comorbidities, with a special emphasis given to understudied populations--including those in rural areas and the Intermountain West, (2) examining behavioral and biological origins of obesity disparities, and (3) tracing the health consequences of obesity disparities. With respect to the first and third objectives, I have worked with two graduate students (Olusola Omisakin and Max Roberts) and two USU faculty members (Hyojun Park and Sojung Lim) to study how changes in obesity-related comorbidities such as diabetes and heart disease have contributed to racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy in Washington D.C. and (in a separate study) the four-corner states, including Utah. Through a series of decomposition life-table analyses of restricted-use mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics, we found that racial/ethnic disparities in obesity-related causes of mortality and changes in these conditions have contributed to large gaps in longevity between groups. For the second objective, I have devoted much effort to a NIH-funded study of longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics and obesity in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (WSCS). Specific activities have included (1) managing a team of scientists at Stanford University, who recently completed bioassays of blood samples of WSCS participants, and (2) collaborating with scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to conduct longitudinal data analyses using multilevel models to separate within- and between-person associations between markers of restorative sleep, ((i.e., rapid-eye movement (REM) and proportion of time spent in stage 3 (N3) "deep sleep")), sleep duration, and body habitus. Through a process of refinement over the past year, we have finalized these analyses and are now in advanced stages of producing manuscripts for scientific review. Key findings from these analyses are: (1) sleep differentials (i.e., differences between weekday and weekend sleep duration) contribute to weight gain and obesity, and (2) within-person changes and between-person differences in REM and N3 sleep both contribute to weight gain during mid-to-late life. These findings will strengthen scientific evidence regarding sleep as a contributor to obesity in adulthood, as extant literature is plagued by contradictory findings stemming from data issues (e.g., small clinical studies or cross-sectional data) and less-rigorous research methods. Also relating to the second project objective, I recently completed a study of individual- and neighborhood-levels factors that contribute to late bedtimes among a nationally-representative sample of kindergarteners (as noted, insufficient sleep is a purported contributor to weight gain and obesity, and therefore an important point of focus in this UAES project). This study, which involved collaboration with a former M.S. student (Carlyn Graham) and current USU faculty members Gabriele Ciciurkaite and Jamison Fargo, found large racial/ethnic disparities, with parents of Asian, Black, and Hispanic kindergarteners reporting significantly later bedtimes than non-Hispanic whites. In addition to these studies, I worked with colleagues in Canada, Hong Kong, and the United States to complete a mathematical and statistical assessment of the intrinsic estimator (IE) approach to estimating age-period-cohort (APC) models of rate data, including population health outcomes such as obesity and mortality rates. Our study found that, when used appropriately, the IE method is a valid and reliable estimator of APC models.
Publications
|
Progress 10/01/18 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:The main target audience during this reporting period was scholars in public health and the social sciences who are interested in (a) sleep-obesity associations, and (b) racial/ethnic disparities in health and longevity. Changes/Problems:I do not anticipate any notable changes or problems to my UAES objectives in 2020. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In 2019, my UAES project provided excellent research training and professional development opportunities for four graduate students in Sociology: Emily Young, M.S. student; Amin Etemadifar, Ph.D. student; Max Roberts, Ph.D. student; and Olusola Omisakin, Ph.D. student. Ms. Young has focused her efforts on studying associations between sleep, obesity and self-reported health, using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System--a population-based epidemiological study of the U.S. population. Mr. Roberts and Mr. Omisakin have contributed to my ongoing program of research focusing on obesity-related contributors to racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy. In addition, Mr. Roberts presented some of this research at a major national public health conference and co-authored a manuscript pertaining to these research activities in a well-regarded peer reviewed journal. These experiences provided outstanding training and networking opportunities for Mr. Roberts. Finally, Mr. Etemadifar has engaged in preliminary research comparing obesity-related determinants to "deaths of despair" (e.g., opioid- and self-harm related mortality) as contributors to recent declines in U.S. life expectancy. These issues will form the core of his Ph.D. dissertation in Sociology, which he is slated to complete in early 2021. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In the past year, I disseminated UAES-related research at two professional conferences and three peer-reviewed academic journals. In April 2019, Gabriele Ciciurkaite presented our research on childhood sleep and neighborhood conditions at the annual meeting for the Population Association of America. In October 2019, Max Roberts presented our latest work on racial disparities in life expectancy at the American Public Health Association conference. Max Roberts, Sojung Lim and I also published a manuscript pertaining to these issues in BMC Public Health. The manuscript I coauthored with Ryan Masters on PAFs has been accepted for publication in Population Health Metrics, and should be available online within the next month. Finally, a manuscript I am coauthoring with Carlyn Graham and Gabrielle Ciciurkaite on neighborhood conditions and childhood sleep is currently under "revise and resubmit" status at Sleep Health: Journal of the National Sleep Foundation. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Next year, my program of research will focus strongly on NIH-funded research on sleep-obesity associations, which are related to my UAES project. This will include analyses of biomarker data (e.g., leptin) as well as various markers of sleep itself (e.g., diary reports of sleep duration) and their associations with obesity. In addition, I will also continue working with Carlyn Graham to and Gabriele Ciciurkaite to move our project on neighborhood conditions and childhood sleep through all phases of the publication process. Moreover, I will press forward with M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students in Sociology to complete ongoing studies on (a) associations between obesity, sleep and self-reported health, and (b) the effects of obesity-related conditions on racial/ethnic disparities in U.S. life expectancy. This list is not exhaustive, but I anticipate that these projects will occupy most of my research time in the coming year.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the past year, my research activities have continued to focus primarily on objective 2 (examining behavioral and biological origins of obesity disparities) and objective 3 (tracing the health consequences of obesity disparities). Much of my effort during this reporting period has been devoted to a NIH-funded study of longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics and obesity in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (WSCS). Specific activities have included (1) managerial oversight of a Stanford team of scientists, who are conducting bioassays of blood samples of WSCS participants, and (2) sophisticated longitudinal data analyses to separate within- and between-person associations between markers of sleep quality (i.e., rapid-eye movement and proportion of time spent in stage 3-4 "deep sleep") and body habitus. Our analyses reveal that within-person changes in sleep quality are significant predictors of weight change over the adult life course. This finding will make an important contribution to the literature in this area, which is currently beset by contradictory findings and less robust research methods (e.g., cross-sectional associations of between-person differences). I have also continued to work with a former M.S. student (Carlyn Graham) and Gabriele Ciciurkaite (Sociology faculty at USU) to study neighborhood contributors to poor sleep hygiene among young children, which - as just noted - has implications for the etiology of obesity. Adding to previous findings, our most recent analyses of data from the kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study show that neighborhood conditions (e.g., social disorder) partly account for large racial/ethnic sleep disparities. With regard to the health consequences of obesity, I have worked with four graduate students (Amin Etemadifar, Max Roberts, Emily Young, and Olusola Omisakin) and two USU faculty (Sojung Lim and Hyojun Park) to examine how obesity and obesity-related conditions (e.g., heart disease and diabetes) contribute to overall wellbeing, as well as racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy. Over the past year, I completed one study that decomposed racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy into various individual causes of death, and initiated two others in this area--including an analysis of Native Americans in the four-corner states (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona). Although specific findings vary across study populations, in each case we find evidence that causes of death related to the U.S. obesity epidemic explain a sizable portion of racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy. In addition to these studies, Ryan Masters (faculty at the University of Colorado-Boulder) and I completed a statistical assessment of different estimation methods for population-attributable fractions (PAFs) for specific causes of mortality. This has important implications for my third study objective, as previous studies using different PAF methods have disagreed sharply about the proportion of U.S. mortality that is attributable to the obesity epidemic. Our investigation showed that, in the presence of confounding and selection bias - common occurrences in large-scale epidemiological studies - traditional methods of PAF estimation result in substantial underestimates of obesity as a cause of U.S. mortality.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Masters, R. K., & Reither, E. N. (2019). Accounting for biases in survey-based estimates of population attributable fractions. Population Health Metrics, 17(19), 1-9.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Roberts, M. T., Reither, E. N., & Lim, S.-J. (2019). Contributors to Wisconsins persistent black-white gap in life expectancy. BMC Public Health, 19(891), 1-11.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Presentations
Roberts, M. (Presenter & Author), Reither, E. N. (Author Only), Lim, S.-J., American Public Health Association, "Contributors to the Black-White Life Expectancy Gap in Washington D.C.," Philadelphia, PA. (November 2019)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Presentations
Burger, A. (Presenter & Author), Reither, E. N. (Author Only), Mamelund, S.-E. (Author Only), Lim, S.-J. (Author Only), American Public Health Association, "Intersection of Race, Gender and Vaccination Uptake during the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic," Philadelphia, PA. (November 2019)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Presentations
Graham, C. (Author Only), Ciciurkaite, G. (Presenter & Author), Reither, E. N. (Author Only), Population Association of America, "Does Neighborhood Context Matter? A Multilevel Analysis of Neighborhood Disadvantage and Children's Sleep Health," Austin, TX. (April 2019)
|
Progress 10/01/17 to 09/30/18
Outputs
Target Audience:The main target audience during this reporting period were scholars in public health and the social sciences who are interested in (a) sleep-obesity associations, and (b) racial/ethnic disparities in health and longevity. Changes/Problems:I do not anticipate any notable changes or problems to my UAES objectives in 2019. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In 2018, this UAES project provided training and mentoring for Emily Young, Amin Etemadifar and Max Roberts. From January through May 2018, Emily Young worked as my UAES-funded research assistant. We explored the extant literature and research opportunities on the effects of obesity and short sleep duration on quality of life outcomes in various U.S. populations. Unfortunately, Emily needed to take a leave of absence from our M.S. program in Sociology in Fall 2018, postponing our research in this area. However, Emily will resume school in Spring 2019, allowing us to continue our progress. Although not funded by the UAES, Amin Etemadifar and Max Roberts (Ph.D. students in Sociology) both engage in research that strongly aligns with my UAES project objective to study the health consequences of obesity disparities. Over the past year, both students have worked with me to understand how obesity and obesity-related conditions contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in life expectancy in various U.S. regions. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In the past year, I disseminated UAES-related research at three professional conferences. In February, Miranda Reiter (a former Ph.D. student) presented our research on racial disparities in type-II diabetes at the North Carolina Sociological Association. In April, Max Roberts and I presented our work on racial disparities in life expectancy at the Population Association of America conference. In June, Erika Hagen presented our preliminary findings on associations between sleep quality and obesity at the Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. In addition, I currently have UAES-related research (e.g., on racial disparities in mortality and statistical methods relevant to my UAES program of research) under review at various peer-reviewed journals. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?My research over the next year will focus NIH funded research on sleep-obesity associations that is also related to my UAES project. Over the past year, my team of NIH investigators directed substantial effort toward data preparation and the collection of biomarker data via blood samples in storage at Stanford University. That work should be largely complete by early 2019, enabling me to resume analyses of longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics such as sleep duration and sleep fragmentation on changes in body habitus during mid-to-late life. I have added Yin Liu (an Assistant Professor in HDFS at USU) to our NIH research team, and look forward to working with Dr. Liu on these longitudinal data analyses in 2019. I will also continue working with Carlyn Graham to understand how both individual and neighborhood characteristics affect bedtime routines in a nationally representative sample of kindergarten-aged children. In addition, I will continue working with M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students in Sociology to (a) understand how obesity and poor sleep affect quality of life, and (b) how obesity and obesity-related conditions shape racial/ethnic disparities in U.S. life expectancy. While this list is not exhaustive, I anticipate that these projects will occupy much of my research time in the coming year.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the past year, my research activities have focused primarily on objective 2 (examining behavioral and biological origins of obesity disparities) and objective 3 (tracing the health consequences of obesity disparities). For example, I worked on a NIH-funded study of longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics and obesity in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (WSCS). Specific activities in the past year have focused on the preparation of polysomnographic and survey data at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and bioassays of blood samples in storage at Stanford University. A particularly notable development is a shift from our proposed assessment of seven biomarkers (e.g., leptin and ghrelin) thought to mediate associations between short sleep duration and obesity to a more comprehensive assessment of human proteins. We are accomplishing this by moving from traditional assay methods to cutting-edge techniques provided by SOMAscan(TM). Our reliability analyses indicate that the SOMAscan process yields accurate assessments of the seven biomarkers originally proposed, as well as data on several thousand additional proteins. Once these data at UW-Madison and Stanford are compiled and cleaned, we will proceed with our analyses. In addition, I have worked with a former M.S. student (Carlyn Graham) and Gabriele Ciciurkaite (Sociology faculty at USU) on sociodemographic and neighborhood contributors to poor sleep hygiene among young children, which is important to the etiology of obesity in this age range. Through our analyses of data from the kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, we have found that characteristics of individual children (e.g., racial identification) and neighborhood conditions (e.g., social disorder) independently contribute to sleep inadequacies. With regard to obesity's health consequences, I continue to work with Ph.D. students Amin Etemadifar and Max Roberts on the effects of obesity on longevity in the U.S. population. To illustrate, Max Roberts and I have used U.S. Census and mortality data to decompose black-white disparities in life expectancy into various individual causes. We find that obesity-related conditions such as diabetes and heart disease explain a sizable portion of black-white differences in life expectancy, especially among women.
Publications
|
Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17
Outputs
Target Audience:The main target audiences during this reporting period were scholars who use age-period-cohort models and, more generally, methodologists in the social and health sciences. Changes/Problems:I do not anticipate any notable changes or problems to my UAES objectives in 2018. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?In 2017, this UAES project provided training and mentorship opportunities for Sun Jeon and Carlyn Graham. In May 2017, Sun Jeon graduated with a Ph.D. in Sociology from Utah State University (USU). In August 2017, Ms. Graham graduated with a M.S. in Sociology from USU. Currently, Dr. Jeon is a Senior Statistician at the Center for Healthcare Policy and Research at the University of California-Davis. Ms. Graham is an Assessment Analyst for the office of Assessment, Evaluation & Research at the University of Utah. These students were competitive for such positions in part due to training they received through my UAES-funded research projects. For example, Ms. Jeon worked with me and Ken Land (a top methodologist at Duke University) to complete her dissertation on the assumptions and conditions necessary to produce valid and reliable estimates with age-period-cohort models. Similarly, Ms. Graham worked with me to complete her M.S. thesis that explored how neighborhood conditions contribute to variability in sleep duration among young children. This is relevant to my UAES project because insufficient sleep has been implicated as an important determinant of weight gain and obesity in childhood and adolescence. These projects provided invaluable hands-on research experience for Carlyn and Sun, connecting them to capable scholars at USU and across the nation. Although they have graduated, I continue to work with both students to refine their studies and work toward submitting them for publication in peer-reviewed journals. I have also just hired a new RA on my UAES project (Emily Young), who is set to begin work in 2018. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In the past year, I have focused on launching new research projects rather than dissemination--especially with respect to sleep-obesity associations related to my recently-awarded NIH grant. However, I have recently begun to submit research findings from those projects for consideration at peer-reviewed journals and professional conferences. For example, along with colleagues at UW-Madison, I recently submitted preliminary findings on REM sleep and body habitus for consideration at the SLEEP 2018 conference. Similarly, I recently received notification from the Population Association of America that a collaborative study (with Max Roberts and Sojung Lim) on racial disparities in mortality (some of which is attributable to obesity) has been accepted to its 2018 conference. I also have papers on obesity classification and age-period-cohort methods currently under consideration at various peer-reviewed journals. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?My research over the next year will focus strongly on sleep-obesity associations that are related to my UAES project objectives and now supported by a substantial NIH grant. In particular, I will focus on longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics such as sleep duration and sleep fragmentation on changes in body habitus during mid-to-late life. Our models will range from classic longitudinal approaches (e.g., separation of between- and within-subject associations) to cutting-edge dynamic panel models that use structural equation methods of estimation. I will also continue working with Sun Jeon (UC-Davis) on obesity classification models, with Ken Land (Duke) on methodological aspects of innovative age-period-cohort models, and with Carlyn Graham to better understand how neighborhood characteristics affect sleep routines among young children. In addition, I will continue working with both M.S. and Ph.D. graduate students in Sociology's graduate program to better understand how obesity is shaping mortality levels and trends in U.S. society. While this list is not exhaustive, I anticipate that these projects will occupy much of my research time in the coming year.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Over the past year, my UAES research activities touched on all three project objectives. For example, in May 2017 I was awarded a 4-year, $2.1 million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to study longitudinal associations between sleep characteristics and obesity in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study (WSCS). Since receiving this award, I have worked with colleagues at Stanford and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to conduct bioassays of existing blood samples from WSCS participants and perform preliminary longitudinal data analyses. Some of those analyses have shown both cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between markers of sleep quality (e.g., REM sleep) and body habitus (e.g., body mass index). I have also continued to collaborate with Sun Jeon on research stemming from her M.S. in statistics and Ph.D. in sociology at USU. In one study, we are refining methods to correctly classify obesity in different racial-ethnic subgroups in the U.S., using public data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. This research uses random forest modeling to select which indirect and direct measures of obesity are most influential in predicting obesity-related health outcomes such as diabetes and hypertension. In another series of studies, Sun and I are refining simulation studies of intrinsic estimator (IE) and hierarchical age-period-cohort (APC) models to evaluate the effectiveness of these relatively new methods for separating temporal dimensions into their various components. This is relevant for obesity research, as there are now many studies that attempt to use these methods to determine how changing age distributions, social conditions (period effects), and birth cohort characteristics have influenced the global spread of obesity. In addition, a new USU Ph.D. student (Amin Etemadifar) and I have initiated research that explores how obesity-related causes of death have impacted rising mortality rates in U.S. states most severely impacted by the obesity epidemic. Preliminary findings indicate that mortality attributable to diseases like diabetes and heart disease have increased faster in those locations than in the rest of the nation.
Publications
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Progress 07/01/16 to 09/30/16
Outputs
Target Audience:Target Audience The main target audiences during this reporting period were scholars who use age-period-cohort models and, more generally, methodologists in the social and health sciences. Changes/Problems:Changes/Problems I do not anticipate changes to my UAES objectives. However as noted, if our NIH project is funded, a likely consequence is that objective 2 (which emphasizes the determinants of obesity) will assume primary importance in 2017. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Opportunities Over the past semester, this UAES project has provided training and mentorship opportunities for Sun Jeon and Carlyn Graham. As noted, Ms. Jeon is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology program at Utah State University (USU). Ms. Graham is currently in her second year of the M.S. program in Sociology at USU. For example, Ms. Jeon has recently worked with me and top methodologists at Duke and elsewhere to study the assumptions and conditions necessary to produce valid and reliable estimates with age-period-cohort models that are widely utilized by obesity scholars in the social sciences. Similarly, Ms. Graham has worked with me to develop her M.S. thesis proposal and secure access to restricted-use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Ms. Graham's thesis is exploring how neighborhood conditions contribute to variability in sleep duration among young children. This is relevant to my UAES project because insufficient sleep has been implicated as an important determinant of weight gain and obesity in childhood and adolescence. These projects have provided hands-on research experience for Carlyn and Sun, connecting them to capable scholars at USU and across the nation. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Dissemination In the limited time this new UAES project has been active, I have disseminated research findings on the intrinsic estimator (IE) method through the American Journal of Sociology (AJS). Our study, entitled "Playing with the Rules and Making Misleading Statements: A Response to Luo, Hodges, Winship, and Powers," was published in the November 2016 issue of AJS as part of a commentary and debate about the IE in age-period-cohort modeling. Publishing our results in AJS is notable, as it is the oldest U.S. journal in Sociology and one of two flagship journals in the discipline (the other is American Sociological Review). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Plan of Work My research over the next year will continue to focus on methodological issues relevant to all study objectives. In particular, I will work with Sun Jeon to complete our obesity classification study and submit it for publication. I will also work with Ms. Jeon and Kenneth Land (Duke) to extend our research on the conditions when innovative age-period-cohort models can be used, and best practices for their implementation. In addition to this methodological research, I will extend research pertaining to my second project objective, which focuses on the determinants of obesity. For example, I will collaborate with Claire Yang (UNC-Chapel Hill) and colleagues to incorporate the latest dietary and physical activity data to understand how they contribute to period changes in obesity among participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. In addition, earlier this year I submitted a $2.1 million-dollar proposal to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research on longitudinal associations between polysomnographic indicators of sleep duration and sleep quality and body habitus outcomes among adults in the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study. We have received a very favorable impact score of 25, placing our application in the top 10 percent of all proposals considered by our study section. I am the lead PI of this multisite project; if funded, it will undoubtedly be my primary research focus in 2017.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Accomplishments In the past six months, my UAES research activities have focused on methods that are relevant to all three project objectives. For example, I have collaborated with Sun Jeon (an advanced Ph.D. student in Sociology) to refine methods to correctly classify obesity in different racial-ethnic subgroups in the U.S., using public data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. This research uses random forest modeling to select which indirect and direct measures of obesity are most influential in predicting obesity-related health outcomes such as diabetes and hypertension. Because of their ease of use and low cost, indirect measures such as body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference are widely used in research practice. Direct measures, such as underwater weighing, are typically more expensive, invasive and time consuming. Fortunately, our study finds that indirect measures such as BMI and waist circumference are generally as predictive of adverse health outcomes as costlier direct measures. In another collaborative effort with Ms. Jeon and scholars from Duke University, the University of British Columbia and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, I contributed to a robust defense of an innovative approach to age-period-cohort modeling known as the intrinsic estimator (IE) method. Specifically, I helped identify problematic assumptions and implementation practices of scholars who have recently critiqued the IE method as a way to address identification issues that are inherent in these models. In addition, I provided guidance to Ms. Jeon as she conducted simulation models using the IE. Our findings show that when basic assumptions are satisfied and best practices followed (e.g., ensuring that all three time dimensions are present in the data before applying full age-period-cohort models), the IE tends to recover the true age, period and cohort trends that are present in the underlying data. This study is relevant to a sizable and growing body of research that attempts to understand the determinants of the obesity epidemic through the application of age-period-cohort models.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Land, K. C., Fu, Q., Guo, X., Jeon, S. Y., Reither, E. N., Zang, E. (2016). Playing with the Rules and Making Misleading Statements: A Response to Luo, Hodges, Winship, and Powers. American Journal of Sociology, 122(3), 962-973.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2016
Citation:
Presentations
Reither, E. N., Krueger, P. M., Peppard, P. E., Hale, L., SLEEP 2016, the 30th Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, "Bedtime, Sleep Duration and Body Mass Index: An Expanded Evaluation of Evidence from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health," Denver, Colorado. (June 2016)
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