Neighborhood Context, Social Relationships, and Health: Examining the Pathways

描述（由申请人提供）：该独立之路奖的主要目的是提供必要的培训和研究经验，以促进PI过渡到 在健康和老龄化领域的独立研究生涯。PI是一位训练有素的社会学家和人口统计学家，在南加州大学的安德罗斯老年学中心寻求生物学和心理学方面的额外培训，该中心是一家致力于衰老研究的杰出研究机构。PI将开展一项培训和研究计划，为PI目前在人口健康研究方面的专业知识增加必要的衰老生物学和心理学模型知识。 该奖项的目的是通过阐明邻里环境和心理社会因素之间的复杂联系及其对整个生命过程中健康的影响，扩展有关社会环境如何“深入皮肤”并影响健康的现有知识。然而，要了解社会环境中的经历如何转化为健康风险，就需要澄清将社会环境与健康联系起来的生物和心理社会过程。邻里社会参与（例如与邻居的互动和参与社区组织）可能是一个关键的，但研究不足，通过邻里影响老年人健康的途径。 拟议的研究探讨邻里社会和物理环境，社会参与和多系统生理功能的生物标志物之间的联系，目的是获得有关邻里环境影响居民健康和功能的具体途径的新知识，特别是老年居民。该应用程序是非常重要的，因为社区在塑造健康和福祉方面发挥着至关重要的作用，特别是在老年人中，他们可能会更加依赖于他们附近的资源和设施，并且更容易受到邻里危害的影响。然而，联系社区与老年人健康的途径还没有得到很好的理解。该项目的目的是：1）确定联系社区的心理社会途径生理失调; 2）测试个人和社区特征之间的相互作用，其对心理社会功能和生理失调的影响; 3）确定社区变化是否预测个人心理社会功能和生理失调的变化。该项目将促进对老龄化经验的复杂，多层次的决定因素的理解。 研究目标将通过二级数据分析计划进行调查，该计划使用多个现有的基于人口的数据集（芝加哥社区成人健康研究、健康与退休研究和美国中年发展全国调查）），所有这些都整合了关于邻近环境、心理社会因素和生物标记物的信息。将使用广义线性模型和多水平方法相结合进行具体目标中概述的分析。了解生物心理社会过程如何将社区和社会参与与健康联系起来所需的技能，这是这项研究所必需的，将作为K99指导计划的关键组成部分获得。候选人将利用南加州大学安德罗斯老年学中心和其他地方的广泛资源和培训机会，以获得必要的技能，从事研究职业，将社区，心理社会因素和生物疾病过程的多层次信息整合到健康和老龄化研究中现有的研究模型中，传统上完全集中在个人层面的因素上。R 00阶段将允许候选人在候选人K99导师的指导下完成研究计划所需的时间，并提交R 01申请，以研究邻里环境和社会关系如何联合收割机结合和相互作用，以塑造生命历程中的健康轨迹。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This primary aim of this Pathway to Independence Award is to provide necessary training and research experience to facilitate the PI's transition to an independent research career in the field of health and aging. The PI is a highly training sociologist and demographer seeking additional training in biology and psychology at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, a preeminent research institute devoted to the study of aging. The PI will pursue a program of training and research that will add necessary knowledge of biological and psychological models of aging to the PI's current expertise in demographic health research. The objective of this award is to extend existing knowledge of how social environments 'get under the skin' and influence health by elucidating the complex associations between the neighborhood environment and psychosocial factors and their effects on health across the life course. Understanding how experiences in the social environment are translated into health risks, however, requires clarification of the biological and psychosocial processes that link social environments to health. Neighborhood-based social engagement (e.g. interactions with neighbors and participation in community organization) may represent a key, yet understudied, pathway through which neighborhoods influence older adult health. The proposed research examines the links among the neighborhood social and physical environment, social engagement, and biological markers of multi-system physiological functioning with the objective of gaining new knowledge about the specific pathways through which the neighborhood environment influences health and functioning among residents, and in particular, older residents. The application is highly significant because communities play a vital role in shaping health and well-being, particularly among older adults who may be- come more dependent on the resources and amenities in their immediate neighborhood and have greater exposure and vulnerability to neighborhood hazards. Yet, the pathways linking neighborhoods to health among older adults are not well understood. The aims of this project are to: 1) identify the psychosocial pathways linking neighborhoods to physiological dysregulation; 2) test for interactions between individual and neighborhood characteristics with respect to their effects on psychosocial functioning and physiological dysregulation; and 3) determine if neighborhood change predicts change in individual psychosocial functioning and physiological dysregulation. This project will advance understanding of the complex, multilevel determinants of the aging experience. The research objectives will be investigated through a program of secondary data analysis with several existing population-based data sets (Chicago Community Adult Health Study, Health and Retirement Study, and National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.S.), all of which integrate information on neighborhood con- text, psychosocial factors, and biomarkers. A combination of generalized linear models and multilevel methods will be used to conduct the analyses outlined in the specific aims. The skills needed to understand how biopsychosocial processes link neighborhoods and social engagement to health, which is necessary for this re- search, will be obtained as a key component of the K99 mentoring plan. The candidate will draw on a broad range of resources and training opportunities throughout the University of Southern California Andrus Gerontology Center and elsewhere to obtain the necessary skills to pursue a research career that integrates multi- level information on neighborhoods, psychosocial factors, and biological disease processes into existing re- search models in health and aging research that have traditionally focused entirely on individual-level factors. The R00 phase will allow the candidate the time needed to complete the research plan under the guidance of the candidate's K99 mentors, and to submit an R01 application to examine how the neighborhood environment and social relationships combine and interact to shape health trajectories over the life course.