# Epigenetic Pathways of Socioeconomic Disparities in Physical and Cognitive Health Across the Lifespan

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN · 2024 · $579,285

## Abstract

Project Summary
Children who grow up in low-income homes are at risk for worse physical and cognitive health for their entire
lives, a phenomenon known as the “long arm of childhood”. But, understanding and intervening on this process
is enormously difficult, as the effects of childhood environments can take decades to become visible in adult
morbidity and mortality. What researchers need is a “wormhole”, i.e., a passage through time that connects
childhood and adulthood. In the proposed research, we will examine the utility of DNA-methylation (DNAm) as
a “molecular wormhole” for investigating how material and social conditions of childhood are linked with
physical and cognitive health across the lifespan. We have exciting preliminary research that supports our key
hypothesis that methylation profile scores (MPSs) can allow researchers to “see” – in real time – the impact of
children’s social environments on their lifelong risk for poor cognitive and physical health. However, there
remain yawning gaps in knowledge about the utility (and limitations) of MPSs for studying the life course. First,
MPSs have yet to be integrated into experimental, longitudinal designs capable of testing causal hypotheses
about the impact of childhood environments on development. Building on the Baby’s First Years Study (BFY;
est. N=850), we will, for the first time, integrate MPSs into a randomized controlled trial testing whether
unconditional cash transfers to low-income mothers for the first ~6 years of the child’s life cause changes in the
child’s methylome in early childhood. Next, we will examine whether MPSs show potential for change early in
the life course and whether this change is associated with longitudinal development of cognitive and physical
health across childhood in the BFY (ages 4 and 6), Texas Twin Project (TTP, N=1404, ages 8-20), and Future
of Families and Child Well-Being Study (FFCWS, N = 2,020, ages 9 and 15). Second, previous studies testing
DNAm as a molecular wormhole have only traveled one way, by applying MPSs developed in studies of adult
health in child samples. We will travel forward through the wormhole, by developing MPSs that index the
socioeconomic conditions of childhood (comparing children in BFY low vs. high-cash groups, and in low vs.
high SES families in TTP and FFCWS), and testing their associations with longitudinal development of
cognitive and physical health in early childhood to adolescence and in older adulthood (Health and Retirement
Study, N = 4,018). Finally, in order to derive candidate biological mechanisms of action, research must
augment summary MPS measures with informatic approaches that identify biological pathways. We will
delineate overlapping and diverging biological pathways implicated in genomic markers identified in analyses
of socioeconomic contexts and cash gifts in childhood and markers identified in published adult studies of
health. This application is poised to make rapid scientific progress as all ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10858575
- **Project number:** 1R01HD114724-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
- **Principal Investigator:** Kathryn Paige Harden
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $579,285
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-01 → 2029-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10858575

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10858575, Epigenetic Pathways of Socioeconomic Disparities in Physical and Cognitive Health Across the Lifespan (1R01HD114724-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-28 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10858575. Licensed CC0.

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