Credit your parents for passing down more than genes – the life circumstances you are born into play a huge role into your long-term health. The full influence of these non-genetic factors, however, remains largely unexplored.
Led by Sociology professors Andrea Willson and Kim Shuey, a new research project will explore those social and environmental influences on health across generations.
Family Context and the Intergenerational Persistence of Health Inequality was among 20 Western research projects across six faculties receiving more than $2.7 million in Insight Grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the funding agency announced this week.
“Social, economic and biological resources are passed from parent to child. All shape our health as adults,” Willson said. “Social class. Culture. Parents’ health. Health behaviours. Family structure. These are reinforced within the context of families.”
Insight Grants support research excellence by both emerging and established scholars for long-term initiatives.
Other Western Insight recipients include:
- Laurel Austin, Ivey Business School, Why do young people vape? A Decision Science Approach to Gaining Insights into Vaping Decisions and Behaviours, $124,669;
- Madeline Bassnett, English, Weather Networks: Climate Change and Community in England’s Little Ice Age, $83,033
- Mark Cleveland, DAN Department of Management & Organizational Studies, Blurred Ethnic Boundaries: The palette of mixed‐ethnic identity and the canvas of consumer behaviors, $98,670;
- Mary Crossan, Ivey Business School, Developing and Embedding Leader Character in Organizations for Sustained Excellence, $152,012;
- Nick Dyer‐Witheford, Information and Media Studies, Left Populism and Platform Capitalism, $89,156;
- Neal Ferris, Anthropology, The Vibrant Archaeology and Heritage Of And Beyond Colonial Legacies, Bath Spring‐Stream, Nevis, $327,288;
- Richard Goffin, Psychology, Maximizing the Value of Personality Assessment in Human Resource Management, $130,066
- Mark Goldszmidt, Medicine, A Study of What Time‐Space Reveals About How Different Configurations of Practice Shape Learning, $149,796;
- Nicole Haggerty, Ivey Business School, IT‐Business Partnering as Sociomaterial Sensemaking to Enable Digital Transformation, $107,266;
- Juan Carlos Hatchondo Couture, Economics, Optimal Fiscal Constraints in Economies with Default Risk, $70,580;
- Patrick Mahon, Visual Arts, GardenShip and State: Art and the Environment as a Commons, $201,890;
- Colleen McGrath, Health Sciences, Enacting a critical participatory action research process with older adults aging with vision loss: A focus on community mobility, $220,432;
- Thy Phu, English, Visual Kinship: Race and the Transnational Practices of Family Photography, $224,810;
- Tilottama Rajan, English, Sciences on the Organization of Knowledge in the Long Romantic Period (1775‐1861), $93,478;
- Graham Reid, Psychology, The Psychosocial Predictors and Late Preschool Correlates of Nap Transition, $99,838;
- David Rivers, Economics, Empirical Methods and Analysis of Multidimensional Criminal Activity, $99,899;
- Christine Roulston, French, School daze: queer nostalgia in modern British girls’ boarding school narratives, $39,590;
- Todd Stinebrickner, Economics, Human Capital Accumulation and Early Career Wage Determination, $129,625;
- Jacqueline Sullivan, Philosophy, The philosophy of neuroscience in practice, $94,276;
- Andrea Willson, Sociology, Family Context and the Intergenerational Persistence of Health Inequality, $176,563.
