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Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries (2011)

Chapter: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

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Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
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Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

Eileen M. Crimmins (Cochair) is AARP chair in gerontology and professor of gerontology and sociology at the University of Southern California. She is also director of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health. Her research is on health trends, health change with age, healthy life expectancy, and health differences in the population. She also works on how social, psychological, and biological factors affect health. Dr. Crimmins is a coprincipal investigator on the Health and Retirement Survey. She has served on a number of National Institute of Aging Monitoring committees and on the Board of Counselors of the National Center for Health Statistics. She has a Ph.D. in demography from the University of Pennsylvania.


Samuel H. Preston (Cochair) is Fredrick J. Warren professor of demography, School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. He has been a member of the sociology department since 1979. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of population change, with special attention to mortality. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine, as well as the American Philosophical Society. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Statistical Association. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.


James Banks is professor of economics at the University of Manchester and deputy research director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, where he also directs the Centre for Economic Research on Ageing. His research focuses on empirical modeling of individual economic behavior over the life cycle,

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×

with particular focus on consumption and spending patterns, saving and asset accumulation, housing dynamics, and retirement and pension choices. Recent work has also begun to look at broader issues in the economics of aging such as health, physical and cognitive functioning and their association with labor market status; the dynamics of work disability; and the nature of expectations of retirement, health, and longevity. He is also coprincipal investigator of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and has become actively involved in designing economic measures for survey data. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from University College London.


Lisa F. Berkman is director, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and Thomas D. Cabot professor of public policy, epidemiology and population and international health within the Harvard School of Public Health. She is a social epidemiologist whose work is oriented toward understanding social inequalities in health and aging related to socioeconomic status, social networks, support, and social isolation. She has recently started research on labor issues related to job design and flexibility. The majority of her work is devoted to identifying the role of social networks and support in predicting declines in physical and cognitive functioning, onset of disease, and mortality, especially related to cardiovascular or cerebrovascular disease. She has a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.


Barney Cohen (Study Director) is director of the Committee on Population of the National Academies/National Research Council (NRC). His work at the NRC has encompassed a wide variety of domestic and international projects, including studies on fertility, morbidity, mortality, housing, urbanization, migration, aging, and HIV/AIDS. Currently, he is also serving as the liaison of the National Academies to the Academy of Science of South Africa and the Ghanaian Academy of Arts and Sciences as part of a larger project aimed at supporting the development of academies of science in Africa. Dr. Cohen holds an M.A. in economics from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in demography from the University of California, Berkeley.


Dana A. Glei is a senior research investigator at Georgetown University. Since 2001, she has worked on the Social Environment and Biomarkers of Aging Study (Taiwan). During 2001-2009, she also served as project coordinator for the Human Mortality Database project (http://www.mortality.org), a joint collaboration between researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Her current research focuses on the effects of smoking on mortality and sex differences in mortality, the impact of stressors on subsequent health, and the role of bioindicators in mediating the relationship between psycho

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×

social factors and health outcomes. She has an M.A. in sociology from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University.


Noreen Goldman is the Hughes-Rogers professor of demography and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. She conducts research in areas of demography and epidemiology, and her current research examines the role of social and economic factors on adult health and the physiological pathways through which these factors operate. She has designed several large-scale health surveys in Latin America and Taiwan. She has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, served on the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Global Health, the National Research Council’s Committee on National Statistics, and the Population Research Subcommittee of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She has a D.Sc. in population studies from Harvard University.


Alan D. Lopez is professor of global health and head of the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland, Australia. He is also an affiliate professor of global health at the University of Washington, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Prior to joining the University of Queensland he worked for 22 years at the World Health Organization in Geneva, where he held a series of technical and senior managerial posts, including director of the Epidemiology and Burden of Disease Unit (1999-2001), and senior science adviser to the Director General (2002). His principal research interests are analysis of mortality data; burden of disease methods and applications; and quantification of the health effects of tobacco. He has published widely on mortality analysis and causes of death, including the impact of the global tobacco epidemic, and on the global descriptive epidemiology of major diseases, injuries, and risk factors. He is the coauthor of the seminal Global Burden of Disease Study (1996), which has greatly influenced debates about priority setting and resource allocation in health. He is an honorary fellow of the Australian Faculty of Public Health Medicine and a foreign associate member (one of only four Australians) of the Institute of Medicine. He has an M.S. from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in epidemiology from the Australian National University, Canberra.


Johan P. Mackenbach is chair of the Department of Public Health and professor of public health at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is also a registered epidemiologist and public health physician. His research interests include social epidemiology, medical demography, and health services research. He has coauthored around 350 papers in international, peer-reviewed scientific journals, as well as a number of books,

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×

and many book chapters and papers in Dutch-language journals. He is the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Public Health and has coordinated a number of international-comparative studies funded by the European Commission. His current research focuses on socioeconomic inequalities in health, on issues related to aging and compression of morbidity, and on the effectiveness and quality of health services. He is actively engaged in exchanges between research and policy, among others as a member of several government advisory councils in the Netherlands (the Health Council, and the Council for Public Health and Health Care). He is a member of the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences. He has an M.D. and Ph.D. in public health from Erasmus University.


Michael G. Marmot is director of the International Institute for Society and Health, and MRC research professor of epidemiology and public health, University College London. He has led a research group on health inequalities for the past 30 years. He is principal investigator of the Whitehall Studies of British civil servants, investigating explanations for the striking inverse social gradient in morbidity and mortality. He leads the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing and is engaged in several international research efforts on the social determinants of health. He chairs the Department of Health Scientific Reference Group on tackling health inequalities. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for 6 years. He is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and an honorary fellow of the British Academy. In 2000, he was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to epidemiology and understanding health inequalities. Internationally acclaimed, Professor Marmot was a vice president of the Academia Europaea and is a foreign associate member of the Institute of Medicine. He was chair of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2005: Closing the Gap in a Generation. Professor Marmot won the Balzan Prize for epidemiology in 2004, gave the Harveian Oration in 2006, and won the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2008. At the request of the British Government, he conducted a review of health inequalities, which published its report Fair Society, Healthy Lives in February 2010. He has now been invited by the regional director of WHO Euro to conduct a European review of health inequalities. Professor Marmot will be president of the British Medical Association 2010–2011. He graduated in medicine from the University of Sydney. He has an M.P.H. and Ph.D. in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.


David Mechanic is René Dubos university professor of behavioral sciences and director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He was formerly dean of the Faculty of

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×

Arts and Sciences, and established the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research. He also serves as the director of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards Program in Health Policy Research. A member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine, he has served on numerous panels of the NAS, federal agencies, and nonprofit organizations. He has received many awards, including the Bernard and Rhoda Sarnat International Prize in Mental Health and the Adam Yarmolinsky Medal from the Institute of Medicine, the Distinguished Investigator Award from AcademyHealth, and the First Carl Taube Award for Distinguished Contributions to Mental Health Services Research and the Rema LaPouse Award from the American Public Health Association. He has written or edited 24 books and approximately 400 research articles, chapters, and other publications. His research and writing deal with social aspects of health and health care. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University.


Christopher J.L. Murray, is the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and professor of global health at the University of Washington. A physician and health economist, his work has led to the development of a range of new methods and empirical studies to strengthen the basis for population health measurement, measure the performance of public health and medical care systems, and assess the cost-effectiveness of health technologies. IHME is focused on the challenges of measurement and evaluation in the areas of health outcomes, health services, financial and human resources, evaluations of policies, programs, and systems, and decision analytics. Dr. Murray’s early work focused on tuberculosis control and the development with Dr. Alan Lopez of the Global Burden of Disease methods and applications. Dr. Murray has authored or edited 14 books, many book chapters, and more than 130 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed publications. He holds B.A and B.S. degrees from Harvard University, a D.Phil. from Oxford University, and a medical degree from Harvard Medical School.


James P. Smith holds the RAND chair in labor markets and demographic studies and was the director of RAND’s Labor and Population Studies Program from 1977–1994. He has led numerous projects, including studies of immigration, the economics of aging, black-white wages and employment, wealth accumulation and savings behavior, the relation of health and economic status, the impact of the Asian economic crisis, and the causes and consequences of economic growth. Dr. Smith has worked extensively in Europe and Asia for 30 years. He currently serves as chair on the National Institute of Aging Data Monitoring Committee for the Health and Retire-

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×

ment Survey and was chair of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. He has served as an international advisor on implementing health and retirement surveys in England, continental Europe, China, Korea, and Thailand. Dr. Smith was the public representative appointed by the Governor on the California OSHA Board. He has twice received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award, the most distinguished honor NIH grants to a researcher and is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in Economics. He has a Ph.D. in economics from University of Chicago.


Jacques Vallin is emeritus research director at the Institut National d’Études Démographiques. His research interests include health transition, inequalities in death, causes of death, life expectancy and life span, population and development, consequences of global population growth, and population of the Maghreb. He is a coeditor of Demography Analysis and Synthesis, a four-volume treatise of demography recently published by Academic Press. He taught postgraduate courses at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris. He is honorary president of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, and he is also member of the Population Association of America, the European Association for Population Studies, and the Union for African Population Studies. He has a Ph.D. in demography from the University of Paris.


James W. Vaupel is the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, as well as being director of Duke University’s Population Research Institute. He oversees research projects in Germany, Denmark, the United States, Italy, Russia, Mexico, Japan, and China. He is best known for his research on mortality, morbidity, population aging, and biodemography (for which he received the Irene Taeuber Award from the Population Association of America), as well as for research on population heterogeneity, population surfaces, and other aspects of mathematical and statistical demography (for which he received the Mindel Sheps Award from the Population Association of America). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science as well as being a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has a B.A. in mathematical statistics (with highest honors) and a M.P.P. and Ph.D. in public policy analysis from Harvard University.


John R. Wilmoth is associate professor, department of demography, and researcher, Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging, University of California, Berkeley. In 2009–2010, he was a consultant to the World Health Organization to develop the United Nations’ maternal mortality estimates.

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×

Prior to this he worked for the Population Division of the United Nations in New York City (2005–2007). His research interests include: causes of the historical mortality decline, future trends in human mortality and life expectancy at birth, exceptional longevity and possible limits to the human life span, and mortality differentials among social groups within populations. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Population Association of America, and the Gerontological Society of America. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals including Demographic Research and European Journal of Population. He has a Ph.D. in statistics and demography from Princeton University.

Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
Page 177
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
Page 178
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
Page 179
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
Page 180
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
Page 181
Suggested Citation:"Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Research Council. 2011. Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13089.
×
Page 182
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During the last 25 years, life expectancy at age 50 in the United States has been rising, but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. This difference is particularly notable given that the United States spends more on health care than any other nation. Concerned about this divergence, the National Institute on Aging asked the National Research Council to examine evidence on its possible causes.

According to Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries, the nation's history of heavy smoking is a major reason why lifespans in the United States fall short of those in many other high-income nations. Evidence suggests that current obesity levels play a substantial part as well. The book reports that lack of universal access to health care in the U.S. also has increased mortality and reduced life expectancy, though this is a less significant factor for those over age 65 because of Medicare access. For the main causes of death at older ages -- cancer and cardiovascular disease -- available indicators do not suggest that the U.S. health care system is failing to prevent deaths that would be averted elsewhere. In fact, cancer detection and survival appear to be better in the U.S. than in most other high-income nations, and survival rates following a heart attack also are favorable.

Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries identifies many gaps in research. For instance, while lung cancer deaths are a reliable marker of the damage from smoking, no clear-cut marker exists for obesity, physical inactivity, social integration, or other risks considered in this book. Moreover, evaluation of these risk factors is based on observational studies, which -- unlike randomized controlled trials -- are subject to many biases.

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