Father Closeness in Early Childhood as Predictor of Adult Health Outcomes

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R01 · $42,957 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY The Pathways to Health (PaTH) parent project (R01HL152444, PI’s: Marlsand/Shaw), designed to identify factors that contribute to emerging cardiometabolic health disparities that track a socioeconomic gradient, will investigate family-, school-, and community-level factors during critical periods of childhood that are expected to mediate associations between low family income and cardiometabolic health in 248 adult men (aged 31-33 years). While the onset of cardiovascular disease typically occurs in adulthood, the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease begins in childhood. The quality of parent-child relationships has been consistently cited as a major contributor to the early emergence of risky health factors and behaviors, yet most of this research focuses exclusively on mother-child relationships or mother- and father- child relationships assessed jointly. As the number of children living with two biological, married parents has declined and family instability has become increasingly prevalent, it is imperative to examine the father-child relationship independently and to consider the context of father-child coresidence to better understand which pathways, and for whom, father-child relationships affect physical health. As a logical extension of the parent project, we propose to use this diversity supplement and training experience to allow a promising minority predoctoral student to examine whether father-son relationship closeness/conflict during early childhood is associated with differences in combined indices of cardiometabolic health risk (e.g., elevated blood pressure, obesity, systemic inflammation) and health behaviors (e.g., sleep quality, substance use) at age 31 and to test whether this association is moderated by father-child coresidence and mediated by adolescent markers of health risk.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10498443
Project number
3R01HL152444-01A1S1
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
Principal Investigator
ANNA L MARSLAND
Activity code
R01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$42,957
Award type
3
Project period
2021-08-01 → 2026-07-31