Healthy Aging In Neighborhoods of Diversity Across the Life Span (HANDLS)

National Institute On Aging

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Abstract

The HANDLS study is an epidemiologic, interdisciplinary, longitudinal study of a baseline representative sample of African Americans and whites between 30-64 years of age recruited as a fixed cohort of participants by household screenings from an area probability sample of twelve census segments in Baltimore City. The HANDLS design is an area probability sample of Baltimore based on the 2000 Census. Using this methodology, working with survey statisticians we chose 13 neighborhoods to meet race by SES by age distribution of the prospective cohort because they were likely to yield representative distributions of Baltimore City with sufficient individuals to fill the sampling design based. Within the 13 neighborhoods, housing units were selected with a known non-zero chance of selection. The addresses were screened for individuals who meet the age-gender-race-poverty sample size, and those were chosen to be included in the sample using a probability sampling method. From these probabilities, we can compute weights to adjust for unequal probabilities of selection. These weights will be needed to compute estimates that combine subjects across any of the age-gender-race-poverty group. The poverty status delimiter is 125% poverty based on 125% of the 2004 Health and Human Services Poverty Guidelines. Wave 7 began in Spring 2022, continuing measures from Wave 5, COVID testing, the addition of Optical Coherence Tomography to the vision domain and is ongoing. During this reporting period, we made progress in completing the wave 7 visit for many participants, some we have not seen since before the pandemic. Notable findings this year include results from our continued participation in international genetic consortia, other studies focused on nutrition, biomarkers of mortality, cognition, telomeres, extracellular vesicles, DNA methylation, transcriptomics, frailty, epigenetic age acceleration, brain health disparities, systemic inflammation, social genomics, brain imaging, depressive symptoms, vascular biology, brain health, frailty, oxidative damage to DNA, DNA repair capacity, and the influence of mtDNA haplogroup on health.