Publications by authors named "Tyler J VanderWeele"

Background: Binge drinking has been associated with higher risks of adverse physical health outcomes. Motivations behind binge drinking may involve seeking pleasure and social connectedness, which are important aspects of life that constitute well-being. However, studies that apply a holistic framework of well-being to understand binge drinking remain limited, especially in non-English speaking populations.

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Accumulating studies have documented strong associations between a higher sense of control and improved health and well-being outcomes. However, less is known about the determinants of increased sense of control. Our analysis used data from 13,771 older adults in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)-a diverse, longitudinal, and national study of adults aged >50 in the United States.

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Rational Optimism.

Philosophia (Ramat Gan)

July 2024

Article Synopsis
  • - Philosophers have criticized optimistic beliefs as irrational, but this paper argues that some forms of optimism can be rational and supported by evidence, specifically focusing on resourced optimism and agentive optimism.
  • - The authors introduce a four-fold taxonomy of optimism, clarifying how different types can be evaluated differently: while two forms can be epistemically justified, the fourth type (perspectival optimism) is better assessed on practical and moral standards.
  • - By advancing the discussion on optimism in philosophical and psychological fields, the paper identifies cases of justified optimism that contrast unrealistic optimism and emphasizes the need for more research on these concepts.
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In the present study, we examined the prospective associations of both spousal support and spousal strain with a wide range of health and well-being outcomes in married older adults. Applying the analytic template for outcome-wide designs, three waves of longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 7788, M = 64.2 years) were analyzed using linear regression, logistic regression, and generalized linear models.

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Flourishing is an increasingly common construct employed in the study of human wellbeing. But its appropriateness as a framework of wellbeing at certain stages of life is contested. In this paper, we consider to what extent it is possible for someone to flourish at the end of life.

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Purpose: To investigate whether in volunteering from adolescence to young adulthood are associated with subsequent health and well-being outcomes in adulthood.

Design: Longitudinal cohort study.

Setting: National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.

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Background: Previous research has shown that screen-based leisure time is related to physical and mental health, relationships, and prosocial behaviors. However, it remains unclear whether screen-based leisure time causally affects wellbeing, as previous studies have relied on cross-sectional data, focused on one type of media use (e.g.

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Does higher perceived neighborhood social cohesion in adolescence lead to better health and well-being 10-12 years later? We evaluated this question using data from a large, prospective, and nationally representative sample of US adolescents (Add Health; N = 10,963), and an outcome-wide approach. Across 38 outcomes, perceived neighborhood social cohesion was associated with some: mental health outcomes (i.e.

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Article Synopsis
  • Supporting healthy aging is a key public health goal in the US, and the study explores the relationship between gratitude and mortality in older adults, indicating gratitude may positively influence health and well-being.
  • The research involved 49,275 older female nurses from the Nurses' Health Study and utilized various health and lifestyle factors to assess how gratitude, measured by a validated questionnaire, impacts mortality rates.
  • Results showed that higher levels of gratitude were linked to a lower risk of death, with those in the highest gratitude group having a 9% reduced risk of all-cause mortality compared to those with lower levels of gratitude.
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Reimagining public health's future should include explicitly considering spirituality as a social determinant of health that is linked to human goods and is deeply valued by people and their communities. Spirituality includes a sense of ultimate meaning, purpose, transcendence, and connectedness. With that end in mind, we assessed how recommendations recently issued by an expert panel for integrating spiritual factors into public health and medicine are being adopted in current practice in the United States.

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A framework is put forward for the proper scope of considerations concerning flourishing within medicine, psychiatry, clinical counselling, public health and public policy. Each of these disciplines and associated institutional practices have distinctive contributions to make in advancing flourishing within society. In each case, there are also various aspects of flourishing that extend beyond each practice's purview; and yet to restrict attention only to health, narrowly conceived, limits what each of these practices can in fact accomplish.

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Background: Several intergovernmental organizations, including the World Health Organization and United Nations, are urging countries to use well-being indicators for policymaking. This trend, coupled with increasing recognition that positive affect is beneficial for health/well-being, opens new avenues for intervening on positive affect to improve outcomes. However, it remains unclear if positive affect in adolescence shapes health/well-being in adulthood.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study assessed a 4-week forgiveness campaign among 2,878 Colombian students to see its impact on forgiveness, mental health, and overall well-being, finding positive results post-campaign.
  • - Participants engaged in an average of 7.18 campaign activities, with a stronger participation linked to increased feelings of forgiveness; however, not all activities were equally effective.
  • - The intervention led to improvements in mental health and flourishing, emphasizing the importance of forgiveness initiatives in community health, although past conflicts might require strategic leadership support for success.
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Background: Childhood maltreatment is common globally and impacts morbidity, mortality, and well-being. Our understanding of its impact is constrained by key substantive and methodological limitations of extant research, including understudied physical health outcomes and bias due to unmeasured confounding. We address these limitations through a large-scale outcome-wide triangulation study.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, researchers found that changes in physical activity, mental health, and social connections led to lower levels of loneliness four years later.
  • * Findings suggest that subjective health and social perceptions are more influential on loneliness compared to objective health measures, highlighting areas for potential intervention.
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Background: A sense of hopelessness is rising at alarming levels among adolescents in the United States. There is urgent need to understand the potential implications of being hopeful on adolescents' future health and wellbeing.

Methods: This study utilized data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 11,038, mean age at baseline = 15 years) to prospectively examine the relationship between baseline hope and a wide range of outcomes 12 years later.

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Previous studies on the associations between well-being and work outcomes, such as work distraction and job satisfaction, have largely been cross-sectional and typically focused on only one or two aspects of well-being. Using two waves of data from a sample of employees at a United States health insurance company ( = 1,234), the present brief research report examines prospective associations between six domains of well-being (emotional health, physical health, meaning & purpose, character strengths, social connectedness, and financial security) and two work outcomes (work distraction and job satisfaction). Lagged regression analyses provided some evidence indicating that higher-level well-being in several domains was associated with subsequent reduced work distraction and increased job satisfaction assessed approximately 1 year later, but the magnitude of associations with each outcome did vary by specific domain.

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An individual's flourishing is sustained by and dependent on their community's well-being. We provide one of the first studies of a measure of communal subjective well-being, focusing on individuals' relationships with their community. Using two samples from the Greater Columbus, Ohio region, we provide evidence of the reliability and validity of the Subjective Community Well-being (SCWB) assessment.

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Schools of public health often serve both as public health advocacy organizations and as academic units within a university. These two roles, however, can sometimes come into conflict. I experienced this conflict directly at the Harvard T.

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Schools of public health are often situated within universities but not infrequently also function as public health advocacy organizations. Viewpoint diversity on many issues is often limited within schools of public health and does not reflect the diversity one finds in society more generally. It is argued that welcoming, and even seeking out, viewpoint diversity within public health would contribute to understanding and knowledge, to the training public health leaders and academics who can serve the whole of society, and to working together across ideological lines to better contribute to population health.

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Comparing outcomes for individuals remaining married to those for single or divorced individuals might overstate the positive effects of the decision to marry, since marriage carries an inherent risk of divorce and its associated negative outcomes. While a growing literature has examined marital transitions, confounding by past marital history remains a concern and only a limited set of outcomes have been examined. To address these issues, this study examined incident first-time marriage and incident divorce/separation in relation to multiple subsequent physical health, health behavior, psychological distress, and psychosocial well-being outcomes in a large sample of female nurses in the U.

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The detrimental effects of loneliness and social isolation on health and well-being outcomes are well documented. In response, governments, corporations, and community-based organizations have begun leveraging tools to create interventions and policies aimed at reducing loneliness and social isolation at scale. However, these efforts are frequently hampered by a key knowledge gap: when attempting to improve specific health and well-being outcomes, decision-makers are often unsure whether to target loneliness, social isolation, or both.

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