HRS Workshop Presentations
Thank you to everyone who participated in the October 2025 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) Workshop!
About the workshop: Climate change is influencing human health and is particularly challenging for older adults. HRS holds tremendous potential to facilitate important research on aging-health-environment. This 1.5-day workshop introduced the HRS and reviewed examples of environmental data that can be integrated for this research.
View the full HRS Workshop agenda, with links to slide decks for each day’s overview and presentations. You can also view and download our speakers’ insightful presentations, listed alphabetically below.
Sara Adar, University of Michigan: EPOCH and the Gateway to Global Aging
Jennifer Alshire, University of Southern California
Contextual & Environmental Data: Resources for HRS and Other Aging Surveys
Deborah Balk, Mara Sheftel, Jennifer Brite, and Na Yin, City University New York
Scorching Circumstances: The Role of Extreme Heat in Disability Among Older Workers in Heat Sensitive Jobs
Zhirui Chen, Boston College
Connections among individual- and community-level housing characteristics and disaster preparedness in a national sample of low income U.S. adults
Eun Young Choi, University of Southern California
Aging under Climate Stress How Extreme Temperatures Shape Multi-System Biological Aging
Yanjun Dong, University at Albany
Aging, Climate, and the Social Determinants of Health: Disaster Preparedness and Inequities Among Older Adults
Jessica Finlay, University of Colorado Boulder
Contexts of Cognitive Health in the HRS
Melanie Gall, Arizona State University: Spatial Hazard Event & Loss Database for the US (SHELDUS)
Carina Gronlund, University of Michigan: Weather Resources for HRS in the Gateway to Global and NaNDA
Frank W. Heiland, City University New York
Retirement and Family Demography in the Wake of Disasters
Hannah Malak, UC Santa Barbara
Heat Exposure among Older Adults by Race/ethnicity: a multi-scale investigation of thermal inequity
Xi Pan, Texas State
Environment and Cognitive Aging
Fernando Riosmena, University of Texas – San Antonio
Cumulative Disadvantage & and the Aging of Mexican Immigrants in the United States
Hugh Roland, Alabama Birmingham
Climate Disaster Health Vulnerability Implications of Gulf Coast Demographic Dynamics
Amanda Sonnega, University of Michigan
HRS Overview
Jenna Tipaldo, City University New York
Mortality among disaster-exposed older adults in the US Health and Retirement Study
Roger Wong, State University of New York Upstate Medical University
Age Differences in Climate Event Exposures in a National U.S. Sample