Madhavan leads team to study kinship effects

Faculty Associate Sangeetha Madhavan, African American Studies, with fellow Associates Kirsten Stoebenau, Behavioral and Commuity Health, and Kenneth Leonard, Agricultural and Resource Economics, as well as Mike Wagner, African American Studies, and colleagues at the African Population and Health Research Center, will undertake a 5-year project to develop a new measure of marriage and understand how marriage and kinship impact child well being in urban Kenya. "We know little about how social correlates, specifically kinship and marriage, impact children’s health and development in [African] settings," she said. "The importance of this study is underscored by the need to identify models of family support that offer optimum protection for vulnerable mothers and young children in urban African settings."

The project is being funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.