Panel session 8: Friday, June 7 — 1 to 2 p.m.
Chair
Lauren Schmitz
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Lauren Schmitz is an assistant professor of public affairs. She uses social, genomic, and epigenomic data to study how social inequalities shape disparities in health and socioeconomic attainment.
Panelists
Agus Surachman
Drexel University
Agus Surachman is a developmental and health disparities scholar interested in understanding the role of socioeconomic status, minoritized identities, and psychosocial stress on accelerated biological aging, especially in the context of cancer and cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic syndrome.
Presentation or paper
Epigenetic aging moderates the association between lower socioeconomic status and faster declines in kidney function across a decade
Lauren Opsasnick Rogers
University of Michigan
Lauren Opsasnick Rogers is a fourth-year PhD student in Epidemiology at the University of Michigan working with Dr. Jennifer Smith. Her specific area of research involves genetic epidemiology, with a strong focus on understanding how social and environmental factors influence genomic activity. Lauren’s dissertation investigates the epigenetic biomarkers of long-term psychosocial stress and their influence on cardiometabolic risk in older adults, using data from the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study.
Presentation or paper
Epigenome-wide mediation analysis of the relationship between psychosocial stress and cardiometabolic risk factors in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS)
Aarti Bhat
The Pennsylvania State University
Aarti is a PhD candidate in Human Development and Family Studies & Demography at The Pennsylvania State University, with a BS in Human Development and Family Sciences from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on recessionary hardships, particularly post-recession housing insecurity, among midlife and older adults; how stress around such events can contribute to biological and epigenetic changes among aging adults; and the biopsychosocial pathways by which recession stress is connected to physiological and epigenetic outcomes, including allostatic load, epigenetic aging, and gene expression. Aarti is mentored by Dr. David Almeida, and works extensively with the Midlife in the United States study to assess these research questions.
Presentation or paper
The great recession and epigenetic aging among midlife and older adults