Premature Mortality and its Correlates: A Study of Individual and Contextual Factors Associated with Early Mortality among Black Adults in the United States

The overall objective of this study is to illuminate contextual and individual factors associated with racial disparities in mortality. Historically and currently, Black Americans die at significantly higher rates at younger ages than their White counterparts. Eliminating the Black-White gap in life expectancy requires understanding of the contextual and individual factors associated with mortality outcomes. With data from the Woodlawn Study, a community cohort study of 1,242 Black Americans that began in 1966, we have an unprecedented opportunity to examine life course factors that may increase or decrease the risk of death through midlife among Black Americans. With in-depth interview and contextual data spanning 50+ years, we can isolate the impact of specific factors and map the interaction of multiple individual and contextual factors with the ultimate goal of creating policies and program that reduce premature mortality. The Woodlawn study has the unique strengths of interviewing an almost exclusively Black cohort and collecting details on individual and contextual factors that may be associated with subsequent health and mortality; however, a potential limitation of using this data is that it is highly geographically select, and findings may not generalize to the larger population of Black adults living in the United States. In this proposed seed grant, to address this concern and better understand how similar Woodlawn Study participants are to a US population-based sample, we will conduct preliminary data analysis to examine the mortality risk of Woodlawn study members and compare age-specific mortality rates with individuals identified as Black in the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY 1979). We will further examine individual social, economic, and health factors associated with premature mortality in both surveys.