# Looking Back to Look Forward: Social Environment Across the Life Course, Epigenetics, and Birth Outcomes in Black Families

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2022 · $597,059

## Abstract

Improving the health outcomes for infants and children has been a national priority in the United States
(US) for over a century. Despite great strides in improving perinatal health care and utilization among American
women, key perinatal indicators have remained stagnant or worsened, the US continues to rank near the bottom,
and racial disparities are persistent. While studies now have gone beyond behavioral and biomedical
determinants of health and encompass the social environment, most research still remains focused on the time
shortly before or during the pregnancy Improvements in perinatal health will require utilization of frameworks
which integrate life-course and multiple-determinant models of health.
 Though the body of evidence linking the prenatal social environment, particularly maternal stress, and
epigenome is growing, little work has yet explored the life course antecedents to the prenatal social environment
and the impact on epigenetic methylation or telomere length. Based on our widely embraced framework for
perinatal health that marries a multiple determinants model with a life course approach, we will investigate
maternal social environmental influences on maternal methylation and telomere length. Change as well as
critical periods will be assessed as the maternal social environment over the maternal life course may
independently, cumulatively, and interactively impact the maternal epigenomic profile and its changes over the
life course. Archived newborn blood spots, available for all pregnant women in this unique cohort of Black births
in metro Detroit, will be assayed to determine the presence of epigenetic methylation and telomere length of
mothers at their own birth; maternal measures at the index pregnancy will be derived from analogous blood spots
collected in our study. Neighborhood level data will utilize both administrative and subjective measures of
neighborhood. In addition to determining associations between the maternal social environment and her
epigenomic features across her life course, we will endeavor to explore potential pathways linking the social
environment and epigenome across the maternal life course with the perinatal outcomes of her offspring.
 Researchers have recently begun to consider social environmental factors and how they relate to
epigenomic features as well as adverse perinatal outcomes. Yet those populations disproportionately affected
by these outcomes are grossly underrepresented in genomic studies. Our sample of 1,000 births to Black
women, with nearly half expected to women residing in Detroit, will provide a rich source of data on the maternal
social environment across the life course and the epigenome. Our team possesses tremendous expertise in the
study of perinatal outcomes as well as measures of social environmental factors often overlooked or not modeled
in such a way as to provide understanding of mechanisms. Our study will substantially increase evidence about
the importance of th...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10491911
- **Project number:** 5R01AG069003-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** Jaime Catherine Slaughter-Acey
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $597,059
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-09-30 → 2026-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10491911

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10491911, Looking Back to Look Forward: Social Environment Across the Life Course, Epigenetics, and Birth Outcomes in Black Families (5R01AG069003-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10491911. Licensed CC0.

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