Meredith Philips
I am a 3rd year Ph.D. candidate at the Indiana University-Bloomington School of Public Health in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics with a minor in Neuroscience. My goals and research interests combine research methods and techniques from neuroscience and epidemiology, mainly using large datasets and functional and structural neuroimaging. My dissertation focuses on the association between reproductive life histories, such as the number of children or age at last child and later-life variation in cognitive performance and brain structure and function. Previously, I have worked in clinical research in neurology and psychiatry, focusing on both dementia and adolescent mental health. I have experience presenting my work at local and international levels and have contributed to published scholarly works. In the future, I hope to use my skills to understand better cognitive decline, aging, and neurodegeneration in diverse populations to identify reproductive life history risk factors, such as the number and timing of children that contribute to functional decline. Additionally, I am interested in ways to provide easy-to-understand scientific and public health resources for broad audiences.
Estimating the association between parenthood and cognitive impairment in rural South Africa: Evidence from “Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa” (HAALSI)
Background: Prevalence of cognitive impairment is projected to increase over the coming decades, particularly in low/middle-income countries. Experiences associated with having children may be associated with decreased cognitive impairment.
Objective: Estimate the association between parenthood and cognitive impairment in the population-representative “Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa” (HAALSI) cohort.
Methods: In-person interviews with 2325 men and 2684 women aged ≥40 in the rural Agincourt sub-district, Mpumalanga province, South Africa, were collected in 2014/15. Participants with cognitive scores ≤1.5 SDs below the mean or with “poor” or “fair” memory ratings from proxy respondents were considered cognitively impaired. We used multivariable logistic regression with self-reported parity (number of children: 0, 1-2, 3-4, 5+) as the categorical predictor and dichotomous cognitive impairment (yes/no) as the outcome. Analyses were stratified by sex/gender, controlling for age, education, and literacy.
Results: Relative to men with no children, men with children were less likely to have cognitive impairment, for 1-2 children (aOR 95% CI: 0.35[0.20–0.62]), 3-4 children (0.19 [0.10–0.34]), and 5+ children (0.20 [0.12–0.33]). In women, only the group with more than 5 children showed this protective effect compared to women with 0 children (aOR [95% CI]: 0.45 [0.25–0.85]).
Conclusions: Our results indicate that the relationship between having children and cognitive impairment differs by sex/gender, with having children being associated with lower probability of cognitive impairment in men relative to women. This sex/gender difference may be due to differences in biological and social roles involved in childbearing and rearing.
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