Highlights of 2011 - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern ...

Social Disparities AND Health
their respective distances to the closest regional commercial
center, the city of San Borja. More than 80 papers using the
data have been published. More recently, McDade is involved
with a project in Ecuador that has shown the regulation of
inflammation differs in this high-infectious disease environment
from previous studies in the United States—a finding that might
point toward ways to reduce levels of chronic inflammation
that contribute to cardiovascular disease.
About the Program
Fathers Wired to Care for Children
A widely reported Northwestern University study, coauthored
by IPR biological anthropologists Kuzawa and
McDade with doctoral student and lead author Lee Gettler,
a former IPR graduate research assistant, provides compelling
evidence that human males are biologically wired to care for
their offspring, conclusively showing for the first time that
fatherhood lowers a man’s testosterone levels. Their study
followed a large group of men—624 males aged 21 to 26
years old—for four and a half years in the Philippines. These
men were not fathers when the study started, and those
who did go on to become fathers experienced large declines
in testosterone levels. These findings suggest that much like
other mammals, in which males help care for the young, tradeoffs
exist: Testosterone boosts behaviors and other traits that
help a male compete for a mate. After they succeed and
become fathers, “mating-related” activities might conflict with
the responsibilities of fatherhood, making it advantageous for
the body to reduce the hormone’s production. The reduction
could also help explain why men who become fathers might
have better health than men who remain childless, protecting
them from disease as they age. The study was published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and picked up
by national and international media, including The New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, USA Today, and
PBS Newshour. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and
the Wenner-Gren Foundation supported the research.
Low-Income Dads and Kids’ Health
For the first time, a study has examined how low-income,
urban fathers are involved in their children’s health. The study,
led by pediatrician and IPR associate Craig Garfield, focused
on 31 primarily African American and Hispanic fathers from
Chicago and Milwaukee who were an average of 31 years old.
The men were a subsample of the national Fragile Families and
Child Well-Being Study. Of the sample, 55 percent were single
and 41 percent had an income of $34,999 or less. More than
half of the fathers reported modeling exercise behaviors and
engaging their children in play as ways to promote their child’s
health, the study reports. The fathers said they knew their
behavior influences their children’s habits, and they often tried
to set a good example. While fathers had no difficulty telling
their children to eat more broccoli or run a lap, they were less
Thomas McDade, Chair
IPR’s Cells to Society (C2S): The Center on
Social Disparities and Health continues to
expand its scope of activities to understand how
social, economic, and cultural contexts affect
physical and mental health, as well as cognitive
achievement, at the population level. Faculty
research overlaps with other IPR program areas,
including Child, Adolescent, and Family Studies;
Poverty, Race, and Inequality; and Education Policy.
comfortable dispensing medicine or handling an emergency
room visit. Given the number of single dads, stay-at-home
fathers, and the general increase in father involvement overall,
Garfield calls this a “wake-up call” for healthcare providers to
include and educate fathers as key partners in their children’s
health, rather than exclusively focus on mothers. The study was
published in the Psychology of Men and Masculinity.
Brain Energetics and Evolution
Kuzawa is collaborating on a five-year, NSF-funded study with
geneticists and research scientists at Wayne State University that
explores why the human brain learns so quickly in childhood
and adolescence and then tapers with age. The brain consumes
enormous amounts of energy in the form of glucose during this
learning ramp-up. By comparing human glucose consumption in
the brain with that of primates across their respective lifespans,
the researchers hope to identify differences between the two
and pinpoint what gives the human species its extraordinary
cognitive abilities. In an article for PLOS ONE, the research team
sheds light on humans’ extended juvenile period during which
the brain is more plastic as compared with primates. The team
studied 37 samples of cerebral cortex tissue, obtained with
consent from patients between 1 and 57 years old already
scheduled for brain surgery. Adjusting for a person’s gender,
they divided the samples by age, comparing gene expression
patterns in children and adults. They found much greater
variation in which genes were expressed (“turned on”) in the
children when compared with the adults. Of the 302 genes that
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