# Effects of Altering Social Connectedness on  Health

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS · 2022 · $654,069

## Abstract

Project Summary
Social life profoundly influences health. The ability to treat and prevent illness and improve human health
therefore requires a detailed understanding of the complex mechanisms underlying the influence of social
complexity on biological systems. Such understanding is key to the development of new interventions to
improve public health. Past studies have demonstrated the critical contribution of social relationships in
shaping health outcomes but are limited in application because such studies rarely consider social support or
health as “complex systems”. As a result, we lack a deep understanding of how and why individuals within
families, and families within communities, remain healthy or become unhealthy in the context of their social
environments. In this application, our proposed research overcomes this limitation by adopting an intervention-
based experimental and computational systems science approach that provides methods uniquely suited to
elucidate the complex mechanisms by which social systems influence health by modeling short- and longer
term integrative effects of social life on health in a proven nonhuman primate model.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10436154
- **Project number:** 5R01HD104529-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT DAVIS
- **Principal Investigator:** Brenda McCowan
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $654,069
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-06-22 → 2026-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10436154

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10436154, Effects of Altering Social Connectedness on  Health (5R01HD104529-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10436154. Licensed CC0.

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