Life Course SES, Social Context and Cardiovascular Disease (LCSES)

Cardiovascular Disease Group
Department of Epidemiology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

LCSES is a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) sponsored study of the association of historical and contemporary individual and contextual socio-economic exposures with cardiovascular disease (CVD). The study design combines retrospective and prospective data from a large, population-based bi-ethnic cohort of men and women, and is an ancillary study to the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study.
The study collected individual-level SES information from childhood, early adulthood and midlife. Additionally, place of residence during the same life epochs was linked with census data to assess the neighborhood social environment. Associations between these individual and contextual SES exposures with CVD-related health in mid to later life is currently being investigated.

Study Goals 

• To examine the association between socioeconomic status across the life course and cardiovascular disease-related outcomes
• To determine the extent to which current and historical neighborhood context modifies the association of individual-level life course SES exposures and CVD events
• To identify explanatory mechanisms for the SES-CVD associations