12/1/2008 Hedy Lee
UNC Chapel Hill
Using Cumulative Risk Models to Link Social Disadvantage to Obesity Risk in the Transition to Young Adulthood
3:30 pm
Friday, December 5
Condon 311
This paper assesses the relationship between social disadvantage in childhood and adolescence and obesity transitions and continuity from adolescence into young adulthood using cumulative risk models and nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The cumulative risk model assumes that it is the accumulation of risk factors across a variety of domains, rather than a single risk factor that is important in adversely impacting child developmental and health outcomes. This paper utilizes multiple measures of health/obesity risk and multinomial logistic regression models to investigate what factors place individuals at risk for obesity, which populations (defined by sex, race/ethnicity and poverty status) face greater levels of cumulative risk, if risk factors operate in a cumulative manner (where higher levels of risk are associated with higher levels of obesity risk) and if cumulative risk measures mediate the relationship between poverty status and obesity and ethnic minority status and obesity.
Hedy Lee grew up in Philadelphia. She attended Cornell University as an undergraduate in Policy Analysis and Management, where she was valedictorian of her graduating class. She entered the Sociology graduate program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 2003 and also became a predoctoral trainee at the Carolina Population Center. With her advisor, Kathleen Mullan Harris she helped to develop Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. She received her Certificate in Health Disparities from the School of Public Health. Her research interests are in the areas of health disparities, race/ethnicity, family, poverty, social demography, adolescence and young adulthood. She has engaged in interdisciplinary research with scholars in public health, policy, demography and economics. She has received grants from the NICHD and HHS and a dissertation fellowship from the Ford Foundation. She has published papers in the areas of race/ethnicity, education, obesity and genetics. Her dissertation examines the relationship between poverty and obesity and physical activity outcomes in adolescence and the transition to adulthood.
|
