Seminar Series: Add Health Grows Up: Social, Behavioral, and Biological Linkages Across the Life Course

This talk will present the theoretical foundations, study design, and research findings of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add Health. Add Health is a national representative study of more than 20,000 adolescents in 1995 who have been followed over time through their transition to early adulthood. The most recent wave of data collection in 2008 expanded collection of biological data to study social, behavioral, and biological linkages in health and developmental trajectories in young adulthood. Based on the new data, a profile of the current health and social status of young adults in their 20s and early 30s in America will be presented, as well as preliminary results on how health tracks from adolescence to adulthood and is a marker for social stratification in adulthood.