George A Kaplan

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Epidemiology

Objectives. To describe national- and county-level trends and variation in a novel measure of hope. Methods. Using data from the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index (n = 2 766 728), we summarized the difference between anticipated life satisfaction (ALS) and current life satisfaction (CLS), measured by the Cantril Self-Anchoring Scale, for...

Objective: Type II diabetes is a chronic disease and a serious global public health concern increasing both mortality and morbidity. Previous studies have found evidence for an association between early psychological stress and diabetes later in life. Methods: This study examined the association between parental alcohol problems and parental div...

Previous cross-sectional studies examining whether John Henryism (JH), or high-effort coping with socioeconomic adversity, potentiates the inverse association between socioeconomic position (SEP) and cardiovascular health have focused mainly on hypertension in African Americans. We conducted the first longitudinal test of this hypothesis on inciden...

Background: Multiple approaches that can contribute to reducing obesity have been proposed. These policies may share overlapping pathways, and may have unanticipated consequences, creating considerable complexity. Aiming to illuminate the use of agent-based models to explore the consequences of key policies, this paper simulates the effects of inc...

Corresponding author. University of Michigan-Flint, Department of Public Health and Health Sciences, 3124 William S White Building, 303 East Kearsley St, Flint, MI 48502, USA. Tel.: +1 810 424 5628.

Socioeconomic disadvantage is often evaluated at single points in the adult life course in health research. Social mobility models suggest that socioeconomic patterns may also influence disease risk. This study examines cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage (CSD) in relation to CVD mortality.Methods Data were from the Alameda County (CA) Study (n=2...

Brazil has the largest population of African descendants outside Africa. Mindful of the imprint of slavery on their contemporary social position, we investigated the relationship of perceived racism to hypertension. We analyzed data (1999 - 2001) from 3,056 civil servants (mean age 42 years; 56% females) at university campuses in Rio participating...

Purpose Understanding how to mitigate the present black/white obesity disparity in the US is a complex issue, stemming from a multitude of intertwined causes. An appropriate but underused approach to guiding policy approaches to this problem is to account for this complexity using simulation modeling. Methods We explored the efficacy of a policy t...

Depression and hopelessness predict myocardial infarction, but it is unclear whether depression and hopelessness are independent predictors of myocardial infarction incidents. Hopelessness, depression, and myocardial infarction incidence rate 18 years later were measured in 2005 men. Cox regressions were conducted with hopelessness and depression s...

Purpose: Life course models suggest that socioeconomic mobility is associated with decreased cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality risk. We examined adult socioeconomic mobility measured by household income in relation to CVD mortality risk among older adults. Methods: Data from 2691 (n(men) = 1157; n(women) = 1534) Alameda County Study respond...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51367/1/Baltrus PT, Race Ethnicity, Life-Course Socioeconomic Position, 2005.pdf

Background There is a need for more Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to strengthen the evidence base for clinical and policy decision-making. Effectiveness Guidance Documents (EGD) are targeted to clinical researchers. The aim of this EGD is to provide specific recommendations for the design of prospective acupuncture studies to support opt...

Context: This article explores the relationship between metropolitan fragmentation, as defined by the total number of governmental units within a metropolitan statistical area (local municipalities, special service districts, and school districts), and racial disparities in mortality among blacks and whites in the 1990s. The presence of numerous g...

Feelings of hopelessness are prospectively associated with increased risk of death, progression of atherosclerosis and other health outcomes. Places as well as people may promote a sense of hopelessness. We used the Chicago Community Adult Health Study to investigate whether feelings of hopelessness cluster at the neighborhood level. Random-interce...

Economic crises can have important effects on a wide variety of determinants of individual and population health, and these effects may be played out over the life course. However, social and economic policies have the potential to mitigate at least some of the potential negative health effects of economic crises, and the substantial variation in t...

Hostility may be related to risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), such as blood pressure. However, the process by which hostility affects blood pressure is not fully understood. The current study sought to evaluate abdominal obesity (waist-to-hip ratio [WHR]) as a potential mediator and modifier of the relationship between cynical hostilit...

Lower socioeconomic position is associated with increased risk for depression. However, few studies have compared the strength of associations between recent, long-term, or trajectories of income over time and depressive symptoms. Using logistic regression models, three household income measures were studied in relation to experiencing five or more...

Einstein is reputed to have said that “everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” These words ring ever more true to epidemiologists as we struggle to gain knowledge about complex disease processes that involve dynamic interactions between biological, behavioural, social, spatial, socioeconomic, and global determinants. Understan...

Dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis is hypothesized to be an important pathway linking socioeconomic position and chronic disease. This paper tests the association between education and the diurnal rhythm of salivary cortisol. Up to eight measures of cortisol (mean of 5.38 per respondent) over 2 days were obtained from 311 resp...

To examine whether the psychological traits of hopelessness and depressive symptoms are related to endothelial dysfunction. Methods: Data are derived from a subsample of 434 respondents in the 2001 to 2003 Chicago Community Adult Health Study, a population-based survey designed to study the impact of psychological attributes, neighborhood environme...

Literature on the socio-economic 'gradient' in health often asserts that income is associated with better health not only for the very poor, but also across the entire income distribution. In addition, changes in the shape of the association between incomes during a period of increasing economic inequality have not been previously studied. The goal...

Background: Lower socioeconomic position (SEP) over the life course has been posited as a contributing factor in the development of chronic illnesses, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) and subsequent mortality (CVDM). Lower SEP has also been shown to be associated with an increased risk of mental health problems, such as multiple depressive sy...

To examine whether the psychological traits of hopelessness and depressive symptoms are related to endothelial dysfunction. Data are derived from a subsample of 434 respondents in the 2001 to 2003 Chicago Community Adult Health Study, a population-based survey designed to study the impact of psychological attributes, neighborhood environment, and s...

Only a few cross-sectional studies have assessed the association between coffee, tea and caffeine and the risk of depression. Our aim was to determine the association in a population-based cohort study. The population-based Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study cohort was recruited between 1984 and 1989 and followed until the end of 2006...

Health disparities have been associated with the prevalence of cardiovascular disease. In cardiac surgery, association has been found between race, sex, and poorer prognosis after surgery. However, there is a complex interplay between race, sex, and socioeconomic position (SEP). In our investigation we sought to identify which of these was the driv...

Depression and cardiovascular disease (CVD) are closely associated, but the mechanisms underlying this connection are unclear. Regardless of the low cholesterol levels observed in depression, a small particle size of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), as well as elevated apolipoprotein B (ApoB) levels, are related to increased CVD risk, even when leve...

Biomarkers are an important aspect of research linking psychosocial stress and health. This article aims to characterize the biological pathways that may mediate the relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and address opportunities for further research within the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), with...

In this paper, we examine income- and education-related inequality in small-for-gestational age (SGA) and preterm birth in Denmark and Finland from 1987 to 2003 using concentration indexes (CIXs). From the national medical birth registries we gathered information on all births from 1987 to 2003. Information on highest completed maternal education a...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64129/1/The Poor Pay More-Povertys High Cost to Health_2009.pdf

Identifying biological and behavioural causes of diseases has been one of the central concerns of epidemiology for the past half century. This has led to the development of increasingly sophisticated conceptual and analytical approaches focused on the isolation of single causes of disease states. However, the growing recognition that (i) factors at...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62467/1/social epidemiology and complex system dynamic modeling_2009.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62468/1/Book review social determinants of health_2006.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62465/1/occupational physical activity energy expediture and 11-year progression_2007.pdf

We examined associations between several life-course socioeconomic position (SEP) measures (childhood SEP, education, income, occupation) and diabetes incidence from 1965 to 1999 in a sample of 5422 diabetes-free Black and White participants in the Alameda County Study. Race-specific Cox proportional hazard models estimated diabetes risk associated...

Studies of the relationship between work time and health have been inconclusive. Consequently, we sought to examine the effect of work time on progression of atherosclerosis. This prospective study of 621 middle-aged Finnish men evaluated effects of baseline and repeat measures of work time on 11-year progression of ultrasonographically assessed ca...

This chapter begins by reviewing research evidence on the relationship between income and health at the individual level, and examines studies that have followed individuals through time to demonstrate the direction of the relationship. This is a fundamental starting point since the individual relationship between income and health likely underlies...

A social epidemiologic perspective considers factors at multiple levels of influence (e.g., social networks, neighbourhoods, states) that may individually or jointly affect health and health behaviour. This provides a useful lens through which to understand the production of health behaviours in general, and drug use in particular. However, the ana...

We examined the association between childhood socioeconomic position and incidence of type 2 diabetes and the effects of gender and adult body mass index (BMI). We studied 5913 participants in the Alameda County Study from 1965 to 1999 who were diabetes free at baseline (1965). Cox proportional hazards models estimated diabetes risk associated with...

Considerable evidence indicates that income and other measures of socioeconomic position are associated with a wide variety of health outcomes. The authors of a few studies have prospectively examined the association between socioeconomic position over the course of decades and health outcomes. The present study, covering almost three decades of th...

Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/60344/1/Haan MN, Kaplan GA, Syme SL Socioeconomic Status 1989.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134322/1/Lifting gates, saving lives.pdf

This study prospectively assessed the effects of occupational physical activity on atherosclerosis progression. This population-based prospective study of ultrasonographically assessed carotid intima media thickness (IMT) used repeated measures of occupational physical activity during baseline, 4-year, and 11-year examinations of 612 Finnish men 42...

Little is known about population determinants of short sleep duration. The authors examined associations between short sleep duration and income, education and race/ethnicity, and assessed changes over time in relative disparities. Questionnaire data from the Alameda County Health and Ways of Living Study (ACS) was obtained at five time-points (196...

The spatial segregation of the US population by socioeconomic position and especially race/ethnicity suggests that the social contexts or "neighborhoods" in which people live may substantially contribute to social disparities in hypertension. The Chicago Community Adult Health Study did face-to-face interviews, including direct measurement of blood...

To measure the childhood and life course socioeconomic exposures of people born between 1871 and 1949, and then to estimate the probability of death between 1965 and 1994, the probability of functional limitation in 1994, and the combined probability of dying or experiencing functional limitation during this period. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND DESIGN...

Socioeconomic position (SEP) has been shown to be related to obesity and weight gain, especially among women. It is unclear how different measures of socioeconomic position may impact weight gain over long periods of time, and whether the effect of different measures vary by gender and age group. We examined the effect of childhood socioeconomic po...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55411/1/Turrell G, Socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood, 2007.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55383/1/Levenstein S, Psychological predictors of peptic ulcer, 1997.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55384/1/Wilson T, Orthostatic hypotension, 1997.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55363/1/Kaplan GA, Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Morbidity, 1989.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55367/1/Kaplan GA, Editorial. Whether Studies on the Socioeconomic, 1997.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55368/1/Kaplan GA, Cognitive Function and Carotid Atherosclerosis, 1996.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55372/1/Kaplan GA, Biobehavioral Risk Factors, 1994.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55377/1/Helkala EL, Associations between Apolipoprotein E phenotype, 2001.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55354/1/Kaplan GA, Book Review of Cornoni-Huntley J,1987.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55355/1/Kaplan GA, Socioeconomic Status and Health, 1987.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55345/1/Kaplan GA, You can't get there from here, 1995.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55335/1/Kauhanen J, The Association of Alexithymia with All-Cause Mortality, 1994.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55340/1/Kauhanen J, Alexithymia May Influence, 1994.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55319/1/Levenstein S, Sociodemographic characteristics, 1995.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55323/1/Lakka TA, Cardiorespiratory Fitness and the Progression of Carotid, 2001.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55304/1/Lynch JW, Is Income Inequality a Determinant of Population Health, 2004.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55310/1/Lynch J, Worplace demands, economic reward, 1997.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55316/1/Levenstein S, Socioeconomic Status and Ulcer, 1998.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55300/1/Lynch JW, Why do poor people behave poorly, 1997.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55276/1/Miller TQ, Are all Hostility Scales Alike, 1995.pdf

Considerable evidence now exists indicating that incidence and progression of disease and disability are associated with socio-economic, behavioural, demographic and psychosocial factors. The emerging life course perspective suggests that these factors might be associated with not just the incidence of disease and death, but also trajectories of he...

Some of the most consistent evidence in favour of an association between income inequality and health has been among US states. However, in multilevel studies of mortality, only two out of five studies have reported a positive relationship with income inequality after adjustment for the compositional characteristics of the state's inhabitants. In t...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/55204/1/Kaplan GA, Behavioral, Psychosocial, 1992.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51572/1/Reynolds P, Social Connections and Risk, 1990.pdf

Every aspect of human health and disease bears the imprint of psychosocial processes. Although this is a rather strongly worded statement, it can, I believe, stand up to the hardest scrutiny at both empirical and conceptual levels. The facts leading to this conclusion have been stated by many. Psychosocial factors are related to exposure to harmful...

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51552/1/Haan M, The Contribution of Socioeconomic Position, 1985 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51553/1/Kaplan GA, The Prelinguistic Child, 1971 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51555/1/Salonen JT, Mercury Accumulation and Accelerated Progression, 2000.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51557/1/Salonen JT, Hyperinsulinemia Is Associated, 1998.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51546/1/Kaplan GA, Is There a Role, 1989 (Chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51547/1/Haan MN, Recent Publications on Socioeconomic Status and Health, 1989 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51536/1/Kaplan GA, Risk Factors, 1992 (Chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51537/1/Kaplan GA, Health and Aging, 1992 (Chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51539/1/Seeman TE, The Health Consequences, 1989.pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51520/1/Lynch J, Socioeconomic Position, 2000 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51522/1/Everson SA, Atherosclerosis and Cognitive Functioning, 1999 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51523/1/Kaplan GA, Behavioral, Social, and socioenvironmental, 1997 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51524/1/Kaplan GA, Behavioral and Social Factors, 1994 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51514/1/Kaplan GA, Economic Policy is Health Policy, 2001 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51515/1/Kaplan GA, The Contribution of Social and Behavioral Research, 2000 (chapter).pdf

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51512/1/Strawbridge WJ, Physical Activity and Cardiovascular Disease Risk, 2000.pdf