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Researchers behind landmark study on adolescent health receive Golden Goose Award

 

A 25-year-old study has had major impact on understanding adolescent health and its effect on long-term adult well-being

 

(Chapel Hill, N.C., Mar. 31, 2016) – Five researchers whose determined pursuit of knowledge about the factors that influence adolescent health led to one of the most influential longitudinal studies of human health—with far-reaching and often unanticipated impacts on society—will receive the first 2016 Golden Goose Award.

 

The Golden Goose Award honors scientists whose federally funded work may have seemed odd or obscure when it was first conducted but has resulted in significant benefits to society.

 

The researchers are Barbara Entwisle, Kathleen Mullan Harris, Ronald Rindfuss, Richard Udry, and Peter Bearman, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill), who are being cited for their extraordinary multidisciplinary, longitudinal study of the social and biological factors that influence adolescent health, and their work’s wide-ranging and often unexpected impacts on society.

 

In the late 1980s, Rindfuss, Udry, Entwisle and Bearman first designed The American Teenage Study, which focused specifically on teenage sexual behavior. In the early 1990s Udry, Bearman and Harris designed a broad-based study on adolescent health and they executed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add Health for short.

 

“This project exemplifies the best in team science,” said Barbara Entwisle, vice chancellor for research and former director of the Carolina Population Center. “It reflects the diverse interests of the team that designed it, not in the sense that each has a defined part, but rather in the sense that all perspectives are fully embodied in the whole.”

 

The social scientists’ landmark, federally funded study has not only illuminated the impact of social and environmental factors on adolescent health—often in unanticipated ways—but also continues to help shape the national conversation around human health. Their work has provided unanticipated insights into how adolescent health affects wellbeing long into adulthood and has laid essential groundwork for research into the nation’s obesity epidemic over the past two decades.

 

The award will be announced this evening at 7:00 p.m. at an event at the Long View Gallery in Washington, D.C. celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Carolina Population Center at UNC-Chapel Hill, in conjunction with a meeting of the Population Association of America.

 

The path breaking nationally representative Add Health study has answered many questions about adolescent behavior, with particular attention to health and other risky behaviors.

 

The study has followed its original cohort for more than 20 years, and it is now providing valuable information about the unanticipated impacts of adolescent health on overall wellbeing in adulthood. For this reason, the researchers recently changed the study’s name to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, and it is a landmark example of how longitudinal research can yield extraordinary and unexpected insights.

 

“The 20 year, and continual, investment by the National Institutes of Health in Add Health is the reason we are successful,” said Kathleen Harris, the James E. Haar Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director and principal director of Add Health at UNC-Capel Hill. “And they are investing in basic science. They’re agreeing that what we’re going to learn 20 to 30 years down the road is going to matter – and it does.”

 

–Carolina—

 

About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. Now in its third century, the University offers 77 bachelor’s, 113 master’s, 68 doctorate and seven professional degree programs through 14 schools and the College of Arts and Sciences. Every day, faculty – including two Nobel laureates – staff and students shape their teaching, research and public service to meet North Carolina’s most pressing needs in every region and all 100 counties. Carolina’s more than 308,000 alumni live in all 50 states and 150 countries. More than 167,000 live in North Carolina.

 

About the Carolina Population Center

The Carolina Population Center works on path-breaking research to address population issues in 85 countries and across the United States, as well as locally in central North Carolina. The center is rich in expertise with 64 faculty fellows, 54 predoctoral and postdoctoral scholars, and a highly skilled staff engaged in more than 50 funded, population-related research projects.

 

About Add Health

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. Add Health combines longitudinal survey data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological, and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships, providing unique opportunities to study how social environments and behaviors in adolescence are linked to health and achievement outcomes in young adulthood.

 

UNC Communications and Public Affairs contact: Thania Benios, (919) 962 8596, thania_benios@unc.edu

 

 

 

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