Drs. Lynch and Smith will develop an individual and population lifecourse framework to better understand the two dominant features of population health - widening disparities existing simultaneously with overall improvements. Through analyses conducted at the individual, regional (states and regions within the U.S. and U.K.), and international levels, the investigators will examine how lifecourse influences affect a particular cohort, different cohorts over time, and disease trends among populations in wealthy nations and between the rich and poor within these countries. A range of exposures and health outcomes will be studied including low birth weight and such cause-specific morbidity and mortality indicators as CHD, stroke, COPD, asthma, TB, suicide, cirrhosis, accidental/violent deaths, and lung, breast, and stomach cancer. Findings should clarify those poor starts in life that can and cannot be overcome and assist in identifying targets for interventions.

George Davey Smith is professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol, honorary professor of public health at the University of Glasgow and visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His major research interest relates to social inequalities in health and how these are generated by exposures acting over the entire lifecourse. Dr. Davey Smith has also worked on HIV\AIDS prevention in Nicaragua and India and on issues around the history of epidemiology, meta-analysis, lay epidemiology and epidemiological methodology. He was elected a foreign associate of the Institute of Medicine in 2008. He is currently editor of the International Journal of Epidemiology.