Lauren Gaydosh, Associate Professor of Sociology, UNC Chapel Hill

Many of the biological measures that we use to interrogate health risks have been developed in samples of older adults. Their association with sociodemographic characteristics and prediction of health and aging outcomes earlier in the life course is understudied. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), with a particular emphasis on the biomarker collection. I introduce the methods for measuring biological age using blood-protein biomarkers, DNA methylation, and gene expression data. Using these measures, I present how such measures are distributed in midlife with attention to health disparities and examine their implications for midlife mortality.