Research suggests that income inequality is inversely associated with health. This association has been documented in studies that utilize variation in income inequality across countries or across time from a single country. The primary criticism of these approaches is their inability to account...

Three causal processes have been proposed to explain associations between group income inequality and individual health outcomes, each of which implies health effects for different segments of the population. We present a novel conceptual and analytic framework for the quantitative evaluation of...

This study investigated whether state levels of social capital are associated with rates of completed suicides in the fifty U.S. states. To do this we regressed state-level suicide rates on an index of social capital, along with other variables known to influence suicide rates such as gun...

Sleep duration, associated with increased morbidity/mortality, has been shown to vary by race and occupation. Few studies have examined the additional influence of immigrant status. Using a nationally-representative sample of 175,244 US adults from the National Health Interview Survey from 2004...

Inflammation is etiologically implicated in cardiometabolic diseases for which there are known racial/ethnic disparities. Prior studies suggest there may be an association between self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination and inflammation, particularly C-reactive protein (CRP)....

Transitioning from work to retirement could be either beneficial or harmful for health. We investigated the association between transition to retirement and risk of stroke and myocardial infarction (MI). We followed US Health and Retirement Study participants age 50+ working full-time for pay...

Walking, both for leisure and for travel/errands, counts toward meeting physical activity recommendations. Both social and physical neighborhood environmental features may encourage or inhibit walking. This study examined social capital, perceived safety, and disorder in relation to walking...

In the U.S., supermarkets serve as an important source of year-round produce (Chung & Myers, 1999), and yet access to supermarkets may be scarce in “food deserts,” or poor, urban areas that lack sources of healthy, affordable food (Cummins & Macintyre, 2002). This study examined objective...