Research News
Bondy, Rehkopf investigate the connection between wealth and health
January 30, 2025 - EPH professors Melissa Bondy and David Rehkopf were featured in the newest issue of Stanford Medicine Magazine for their roles as co-PIs of the Upstream Research Center. Upstream is a collaboration between Stanford, the University of California, San Francisco, and UC Davis to understand how regular income supplementation for people living in poverty in several Northern California communities affects health behaviors and cancer risks.
Multiracial adults face elevated asthma prevalence
January 9, 2025—New research by EPH postdoctoral scholar Tracy Lam-Hine finds that multiracial adults have greater lifetime and current asthma prevalences than monoracial populations. "Our findings help complicate the idea that the health of multiracial people can be expected to reflect an 'average' of the monoracial groups they share identities with," said Dr. Lam-Hine.
Dr. Rehkopf talks longevity and Blue Zones on new podcast
December 3, 2024 - PHS Director David Rehkopf joined Stanford's Health Compass podcast to discuss lessons learned from the world's oldest, healthiest citizens. Rehkopf shares his research on Blue Zones, or places where residents enjoy extraordinarily long lifespans, and discusses how environment, social connections and genetics can contribute to longevity.
Health Equity Research in Population Health: Building the Necessary Workforce
June 11, 2024 – PHS Director David Rehkopf recently published an opinion piece in The Milbank Quarterly about the need for individuals trained to do health equity research and the importance of diverse perspectives in the population health workforce.
Healthy eating and activity reverse aging marker in kids with obesity
January 19, 2024 – A new study led by EPH professor David Rehkopf finds a genetic marker linked to premature aging was reversed in children with obesity during a six-month diet and exercise program.
The Water Surrounding the Iceberg: Cultural Racism and Health Inequities
November 3, 2023 - PHS postdoctoral scholar Tracy Lam-Hine recently published an article in The Milbank Quarterly that explores the health impacts of cultural racism, or the widespread values that privilege and protect Whiteness and White social and economic power. Lam-Hine and co-authors use an iceberg metaphor to describe racism: overt forms of racism, such as racial hate crimes, represent the “tip of the iceberg,” whereas structural and institutional racism represent its underwater base. Lam-Hine and coauthors take the commonly-used metaphor one step further to describe cultural racism as the water surrounding the iceberg, allowing it to float while obscuring its base.
“Because cultural racism normalizes and obscures the injustices of structural racism, ending racial health inequities will require actively naming cultural racism and understanding how it supports the entire racial system,” explains Lam-Hine.
Rehkopf discusses longevity on Future of Everything podcast
September 7, 2023 - Center for Population Health Sciences Director David Rehkopf was a recent guest on Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast to discuss the future of longevity. Rehkopf’s research, which focuses on the determinants of longevity of a population, shows that where a person lives is one of the strongest influences on longevity. He talks with podcast host Russ Altman about his research to examine environmentally-induced changes in DNA that help people in the Nicoya region of Costa Rica live longer.
Association between pregnancy glucose measurements and risk of preterm birth found prior to gestational diabetes diagnostic threshold
May 25, 2023 - Gestational diabetes can affect up to 10 percent of pregnancies in the United States and is a well-documented risk factor for preterm birth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. Data facilitated by the Center for Population Health Science contributed to a new study co-authored by MD/PhD student Richard Liang and Stanford Population Health Sciences Director David Rehkopf that identified an association between higher blood sugar levels during pregnancy and increased risks of preterm birth - even before levels reached the accepted diagnostic threshold for gestational diabetes.
“This finding indicates that the current cut-off levels for diagnosing gestational diabetes might not adequately identify pregnancies at risk of preterm birth,” Liang explains. “If replicated in other populations, it could lead to changes in the way gestational diabetes is diagnosed and provide clues to uncover the causes of preterm birth.”
School facility-based interventions may provide equitable prevention of wildfire smoke exposure
May 20, 2023 - Wildfire smoke is particularly hazardous to children and has been linked to asthma and reduced lung function. PHS researcher Esther Velasquez recently coauthored a study quantifying exposure to wildfire smoke among schoolchildren in California.
Velasquez and fellow researchers found that American Indian and Alaska Native students were disproportionately exposed to wildfire smoke and that a small percentage of schools account for half of the exposure. These findings suggest that prioritizing facilities-based interventions to the most affected schools could significantly impact overall burden. Further, the team suggests that the creation of policies regarding ventilation requirements in schools could benefit children in wildfire-prone areas.