Experiencing the death of a loved one can be one of the most traumatic and painful experiences someone can face in life. Such losses can be overwhelming, resulting in intense and difficult emotions of sadness, emptiness, shock, and despair. Read the full story at Evermore.
On November 19th, 2020, Drs. Deb Umberson and Deborah Carr had the pleasure of participating in a research panel discussion at the inaugural Evermore Digital Summit along with fellow scholars Drs. Ashton M. Verdery and Toni Miles. Founded by Joyal Mulheron, Evermore is a non-profit dedicated to establishing bereavement as a public health priority and advancing bereavement care. A recording of the full summit can be found online, as well as a detailed program of summit speakers and performers.
Dr. James Jackson, HEALING Project advisory council member and one of our earliest supporters, passed on September 1, 2020. Our team remembers Dr. Jackson for his incredible career and pioneering contributions to the social sciences.
Read more about his life and legacy in a memorial from David Lam, Director of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan
A new piece for OZY features work by HEALING researchers Debra Umberson, Rachel Donnelly, Debra Umberson, Cathy Liu, Rachel Donnelly, and Michael Garcia. Author Carly Stern writes, “This data comes from research published in 2017 by Debra Umberson, a sociology professor and director of the Population Research Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Racial gaps in life expectancy and mortality rates have been well-documented. But this study, which used data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study, was the first population-based look at “repeated bereavement experiences” among Black Americans, according to Umberson.
By the time Black Americans turn 60, they are 90 percent more likely than their white peers to experience at least four deaths of family members (defined here as mothers, fathers, siblings and children). It’s also dramatic at the other end of the life cycle: Black children are three times more likely than white children to lose a mother, according to Umberson, who is currently working on research that examines similar questions in Latinx populations. These events early in people’s life trajectories compound racial disadvantage in a way that researchers aren’t adequately capturing, she argues.”
“Losing a parent or sibling as a young child can influence everything from educational outcomes to relationship patterns to socioeconomic outcomes and lifelong health behaviors, says Umberson. For example, Umberson’s other research shows that losing a child by age 40 heightens one’s risk of developing dementia. Black Americans already face higher risk of dementia compared to whites — a likelihood exacerbated by Black parents’ higher chances of losing a child by midlife.
‘Bereavement is a public health problem,’ Umberson says. And it’s one that remains invisible in part because agencies focus on the effects of death on those who die — not on those around them.”
Debra Umberson, Principal Investigator for the HEALING Project and Co-Director of the Texas Aging & Longevity Center, is the recipient of the 2020 Leo G. Reeder Award. The highest honor awarded by the American Sociological Association Medical Sociology section, the Reeder Award recognizes scholarly contributions, especially a body of work displaying an extended trajectory of productivity that has contributed to theory and research in medical sociology, along with teaching, mentoring, and service to the medical sociology community, broadly defined.
A new HEALING publication in Social Science & Medicine, “Race, death of a child, and mortality risk among aging parents in the United States,” explores the association between child loss and mortality risk for white parents and black parents. HEALING researchers Rachel Donnelly, Deb Umberson, Bob Hummer, and Michael Garcia found that losing a child prior to midlife is associated with higher mortality risk for black mothers and white mothers. Moreover, the processes linking child loss to parental mortality seem to differ by race.
See the full publication on ScienceDirect
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