Syracuse Sun

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has renewed two grants, each worth $1.9 million, for research networks led by Maxwell School sociology faculty Jennifer Karas Montez and Shannon Monnat, along with several external collaborators.

For the first grant, Montez, University Professor and Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies, is a co-principal investigator and Monnat, professor of sociology and Lerner Chair in Public Health Promotion and Population Health, is a co-investigator.

Monnat is also a co-principal investigator on the second grant. The NIA, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will fund both grants for five years. The $3.8 million total will be shared across multiple institutions involved in the projects.

The first grant renews funding for the Network on Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities in 21st Century America, which has been funded for the past 10 years. Montez and Monnat are joined on the network leadership team by Jennifer Ailshire and Julie Zissimopoulos from the University of Southern California; Sarah Burgard and Grace Noppert from the University of Michigan; and Taylor Hargrove and Barbara Entwisle from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This interdisciplinary network of over 100 scholars seeks to accelerate research that will help explain worrisome trends in U.S. adult health and longevity in recent decades and why those trends are most troubling in certain states and local areas.

The second grant will fund the Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging, launched five years ago. Its purpose is to advance research on factors affecting the health and well-being of rural working-age and older adults within the context of prevailing demographic trends, slow-moving macro-level stressors, and contemporary public health and environmental shocks. Monnat’s collaborators include Carrie Henning-Smith from the University of Minnesota; Leif Jensen from Pennsylvania State University; John Green from Mississippi State University; and Lori Hunter from the University of Colorado Boulder.

“We are grateful for the National Institute on Aging’s continued support, which not only advances crucial research into U.S. adult health and longevity but also affirms the leadership and scholarship of professors Monnat and Montez,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research at Maxwell School. “Their findings will no doubt help inform national and regional population health policy.”

Past research on mortality by Montez and Monnat has been supported by NIA among other organizations. They are principal investigators on NIA’s 2023 Midlife Health & Mortality grant—a five-year $1.8 million award to examine how state policies since the 1980s have influenced adult psychological well-being.

Monnat is also principal investigator on a $2 million COVID-related grant funded by NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse with Montez, Douglas A. Wolf, Emily Wiemers as co-investigators.

Montez directs NIA-funded Center for Aging & Policy Studies (CAPS), co-directs Policy Place & Population Health Lab (P3H), associates with Aging Studies Institute (ASI), affiliates with Center for Policy Research & Lerner Center Public Health Promotion & Population Health.

Monnat directs/senior researcher at Center Policy Research; co-directs P3H Lab; Lerner Chair Public Health Promotion/Population Health; affiliates ASI/CAPS.