A study of impulsivity and adverse childhood experiences in a population health setting.

As complex mental health traits and life histories are often poorly captured in hospital systems, the utility of using the Barratt Impulsivity Scale (BIS) and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) for assessing adult disease risks is unknown. Here, we use participants from the Healthy Nevada Project (HNP) to determine if two standard self-assessments could predict the incidence and onset of disease. We conducted a retrospective cohort study involving adult participants who completed the Behavioral and Mental Health Self-Assessment (HDSA) between September 2018 and March 2024.

Patient Engagement in a Hybrid Care Pathway for Hypertension: Not One Size Fits All.

We evaluated current experiences and future needs for the long-term engagement of patients in a hypertension hybrid care pathway (Maasstad Hospital, NL). Patients >18 y/o with ≥3 months care pathway participation were recruited by telephone and divided into three age/focus groups with distinct digital skills and attitudes toward lifestyle interventions (group 1:18-40 y/o, group 2:40-65 y/o, group 3:>65 y/o). We used deductive thematic content analysis to cluster the results to the different digital elements (remote monitoring, communication, digital lifestyle intervention) of the care pathway.

Lower Socioeconomic Status Predicts Increased Proinflammatory Signaling in Late Pregnancy: Evidence From a Filipino Cohort.

Objectives: Maternal socioeconomic status (SES) is an important predictor of adverse birth outcomes and postnatal health across global populations. Chronic inflammation is implicated in cardiometabolic disease risk in high-income contexts and is a potential pathway linking maternal adversity to offspring health trajectories. To clarify how socioeconomic inequality shapes pregnancy inflammation in middle-income settings, we investigated SES as a predictor of inflammatory cytokines in late gestation in a sample from the Cebu Longitudinal Health Nutrition Survey in Cebu, Philippines.

Violence victimisation and young adult cardiometabolic health: the role of timing and social identity.

Background: Adolescent violence victimisation is associated with a spectrum of adult social and behavioural health outcomes, including adverse mental health symptoms. However, underlying social stress mechanisms linking adolescent victimisation to adult cardiometabolic health remains poorly understood.

Aim: The current study aims to reveal how adolescent and adult interpersonal violence exposures each get "under the skin" to affect adult metabolic syndrome, including direct victimisation and, additionally, witnessing violence.

Early-life adversity severity, timing, and context type are associated with SLC6A4 methylation in emerging adults: Results from a prospective cohort study.

Background: Epigenetic modifications, including DNA methylation (DNAm), can play a role in the biological embedding of early-life adversity (ELA) through serotonergic mechanisms. The current study examines methylation of the CpG island in the promoter region of the stress-responsive serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) and is the first to jointly assess how it is influenced by ELA severity, timing, and type-specifically, deprivation and threat.

Methods: We use data from 627 Youth Emotion Project study participants, recruited from two US high schools.

Effects of an Intervention on Black Family Incomes on Self-Rated Health and Obesity in Black and White Adolescents and Young Adults.

Structural racism contributes to health disparities between U.S. non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic white populations by differentially distributing resources used to maintain health.

Choice of smoking cessation products among people with substance use problems in the US: Findings from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study Wave 6.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare past 12-month use of cigarette smoking cessation aids (e.g., Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved cessation products or e-cigarettes for smoking cessation) among people with substance use problems (PWSUPs) who currently smoke to people without substance use problems (SUPs) who currently smoke cigarettes in a nationally representative US sample.

Intimate partner violence, depression, and chronic low-grade inflammation among middle-aged women in Cebu, Philippines.

Objectives: Recent discussions in human biology have highlighted how local ecological contexts shape the relationship between social stressors and health across populations. Chronic low-grade inflammation has been proposed as a pathway linking social stressors to health, with evidence concentrated in high-income Western contexts. However, it remains unclear whether this is an important pathway in populations where prevalence is lower due to lower adiposity and greater infectious exposures.

Using phenome-wide association studies and the SF-12 quality of life metric to identify profound consequences of adverse childhood experiences on adult mental and physical health in a Northern Nevadan population.

In this research, we examine and identify the implications of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) on a range of health outcomes, with particular focus on a number of mental health disorders. Many previous studies observed that traumatic childhood events are linked to long-term adult diseases using the standard Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire. The study cohort was derived from the Healthy Nevada Project, a volunteer-based population health study in which each adult participant is invited to take a retrospective questionnaire that includes the Adverse Childhood Experience Questionnaire, the 12-item Short Form Survey measuring quality of life, and self-reported incidence of nine mental disorders.

Structural racism in school contexts and adolescent depression: Development of new indices for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and beyond.

Racial discrimination is an important predictor of racial inequities in mental and physical health. Scholars have made progress conceptualizing and measuring structural forms of racism, yet, little work has focused on measuring structural racism in social contexts, which are especially relevant for studying the life course consequences of racism for health. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we take a biosocial, life course approach and develop two life stage-specific indices measuring manifestations of structural racism in school contexts in adolescence, a sensitive period of development.

Racial Inequities in Birth Weight by Maternal Age Among College-Educated Mothers: The Role of Early Disadvantage.

Introduction: Non-Hispanic Black infants experience disproportionately high risks of low birth weight compared with non-Hispanic White infants, particularly among mothers with high educational attainment and greater socioeconomic advantage. This study investigates how maternal early-life disadvantage contributes to ongoing racial birth weight inequities among U.S.

Do intersecting identities structure social contexts to influence life course health? The case of school peer economic disadvantage and obesity.

Scholarship linking social contextual measures to health outcomes has grown in recent decades, but the role of individuals' intersecting identities in structuring social contexts to influence health remains unclear. Building on an existing intersectionality framework, we conceptualize how this may occur through social relationships. Then, we apply this framework to analyze whether adolescent peer social contextual disadvantage influences life-course obesity heterogeneously by individual gender, race, and early-life income.

Legal status as a life course determinant of health: parent status, adjudication stages, and HIV knowledge among highlanders in Thailand.

Background: Rising nativism and political volatility worldwide threaten to undermine hard-won achievements in human rights and public health. Risks are particularly acute for hundreds of millions of migrants, minorities, and Indigenous peoples, who face disproportionately high health burdens, including HIV/AIDS, and precarious legal status (LS). While LS is receiving increasing attention as a social determinant of health and HIV, understandings are still limited to select immigrant communities.

Body mass and the epidemic of chronic inflammation in early mid-adulthood.

Objectives: Chronic inflammation is a potentially important mechanism through which social inequalities may contribute to health inequalities over the life course. Excess body fat contributes to chronic inflammation, and younger adults in the US have come of age during a pronounced secular increase in body mass index (BMI). We aim to document levels of chronic inflammation in a nationally representative sample of 33-to-44 year-old adults in the US, and to describe associations with BMI, race/ethnicity, and education.

Reproductive health at conflict borders: a cross-sectional survey of human rights violations and perinatal outcomes at the Thai-Myanmar border.

Background: Human rights violations (HRVs) are common in conflict and displacement contexts. Women are especially vulnerable to HRVs in these contexts, and perinatal health is acutely sensitive to related stressors and health care barriers. However, how HRVs affect immediate and long-term perinatal health in chronic displacement settings has not been closely investigated.

Early origins of socioeconomic inequalities in chronic inflammation: Evaluating the contributions of low birth weight and short breastfeeding.

The United States is characterized by persistent and widening social inequities in a wide range of adult health outcomes. A life course approach challenges us to consider if, and how, these inequities trace back to early life conditions, and chronic inflammation represents a potentially important mechanism through which early environments may have lasting effects on health in adulthood. Low birth weight (LBW) and shorter durations of breastfeeding both predict increased inflammation in adulthood, which is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and all-cause mortality.

Displacement contexts and violent landscapes: How conflict and displacement structure women's lives and ongoing threats at the Thai-Myanmar border.

Chronic conflict and displacement carry consequences for personal and social violence. How is violence embedded in displacement-related histories and ongoing circumstances? How might it underlie social and health inequities in host countries? For addressing these questions, I offer a new approach to conceptualizing and measuring displacement contexts and the structural violence embedded therein. I present the empirical case of the Thai-Myanmar border.

Stressor landscapes, birth weight, and prematurity at the intersection of race and income: Elucidating birth contexts through patterned life events.

Women of color and women in poverty experience disproportionately high rates of adverse birth outcomes in the United States (US). We use an intersectionality-based approach to examine how maternal life events (LE's) preceding childbirth are patterned and shape birth outcomes at the intersection of race and income. Using population data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System we uncover common maternal LE clusters preceding births in 2011-2015, offering a description and measurement of what we call "stressor landscapes" that go beyond standard measures by frequency or type alone.

Moving Beyond Salmon Bias: Mexican Return Migration and Health Selection.

Despite having lower levels of education and limited access to health care services, Mexican immigrants report better health outcomes than U.S.-born individuals.