People
Below you will find information on the various people affiliated with the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health:
Directors
Faculty
Directors
Eileen M. Crimmins
University of Southern California
Center Director
(213) 740-1707 | 
crimmin@usc.eduDr. Crimmins is the Director of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health as well as the Edna M. Jones Professor of Gerontology at the Andrus Gerontology Center. Crimmins is known for her work on trends in mortality and morbidity. In addition, she has contributed to the development of the literature on active life expectancy. She is currently working on projects on socioeconomic differences in health outcomes. Crimmins is involved in the monitoring and design of the major national demographic surveys on health in the older population. She serves as Chair of the Advisory Group to NIA for the Longitudinal Survey of Aging and serves on the NIA Monitoring Committee for the AHEAD and HRS surveys. She has also worked with federal agencies on the use of demographic and health measures on the older population. She chaired the Demographic Technical Subpanel to the Advisory Council on Social Security and she is currently working with NCHS on defining appropriate summary measures of health for setting national health goals for 2010.
Teresa E. Seeman
University of California, Los Angeles
Co-Director
(310) 825-8253 | tseeman@mednet.ucla.eduDr. Seeman is a Professor in the Division of Geriatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. Seeman is an epidemiologist with additional postdoctoral training in neuroendocrinology. She has extensive experience in community-based epidemiologic research focusing on psychological and social factors in health and aging and has served as a Principal Investigator for the MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging. Many of Seeman's recent publications have focused on the effects of social and psychological factors on neurodendocrine regulation and cognitive and physical functioning. Seeman is Co-Director, with David Reuben, of the Hartford Center for Excellence at UCLA, a training program for geriatric fellows who plan a career in research.Seeman and Crimmins have been collaborating on analyses of the MacArthur data. Their research focuses on the biological mechanisms through which SES differences in health arise and the biological mechanisms that intervene between social and psychological characteristics and health outcomes. These mechanisms include markers for the health of a variety of bodily systems including the cardiovascular system, the HPA axis, the sympathetic nervous system, metabolic system, hemopoietic system, and markers of coagulation, antioxidants, renal function, and pulmonary function. Seeman is also currently collaborating with demographers at Georgetown and Princeton Universities on a recently approved longitudinal study of aging in Taiwan (Maxine Weinstein, Noreen Goldman and Burton Singer).
Caleb E. Finch
University of Southern California
Co-Investigator
(213) 740-1758 | cefinch@usc.eduDr. Finch is a molecular biologist known for his work on basic biological mechanisms of aging; most recently, he published a book called Chance, Development, and Aging, and he is the editor of Cells and Surveys: Should Biological Measures be Included in Social Science Research? Finch has also been working on the genetic basis of aging in general and in particular on the complex mechanisms involved in brain aging and Alzheimer's disease. Finch is the ARCO Professor of Gerontology, has headed the USC ADRC since its inception in 1984 and is the Director of the Division of Gerontology at USC. Finch has served as the Co-Chair of the Committee on Biodemography of the National Research Council. In this capacity he co-edited and authored a paper in Zeus and the Salmon: The Biodemography of Longevity (Wachter and Finch, 1997). He has written one of the seminal works on the genetic basis of aging, Longevity, Senescence, and the Genome (Finch, 1990). His work in biodemography has been innovative in using mortality experience from a variety of species to address issues of patterns of longevity and senescence (e.g. Finch and Pike, 1996). He is currently investigating species with negligible senescence (Finch, 1998). Much of his work on population aging has direct implications for understanding the biological basis of human longevity.
David B. Reuben
University of California, Los Angeles
Co-Investigator
(213) 825-8253 | dreuben@mednet.ucla.eduReuben is the Director of the UCLA Multicampus Program in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology and Director of the UCLA Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center. He is a Geriatrician-researcher with expertise in studies linking common geriatric syndromes (e.g. functional impairment, sensory impairment, malnutrition) to health outcomes such as mortality. He also has extensive experience with interventional research (e.g. comprehensive geriatric assessment) that has focused on health care delivery to older persons. His most recent work focuses on developing more precise prediction models for high cost health care utilization and the evaluation of geriatric interventions related to undernutrition.
Faculty
Arleen Brown is a STAR Fellow in the Department of Medicine at UCLA. Her research focuses on minority health issues and she has recently received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a study of health care needs among Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes.
(310) 794-6047 | abrown@mednet.ucla.edu | more info Cameron Campbell is a demographer who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology. He has done research on mortality transitions in China.
(310) 825-1031 | camcam@ucla.edu | more info Jeffrey Cummings is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the ADRC at UCLA. His research focuses on risk factors for dementia and cognition in aging. He also has experience in clinical implications of dementia and treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.
(310) 206-5238 | cummings@ucla.edu | more info Susan Ettner is an Associate Professor in the division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at the UCLA School of Medicine. She is an economist who recently moved to UCLA from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ettner has done work on the bi-directionality in the relationship between SES and health.
(310) 794-2289 | settner@mednet.ucla.edu | more info Margaret Gatz is a USC psychologist who has worked on cognitive and behavioral functioning in a longitudinal panel of elderly Swedish twins.
(213) 740-2212 | gatz@usc.edu | Gatz Lab homepage Gail Greendale is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Multicampus Program in Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at UCLA. Her research focuses on women's health, particularly health impacts of menopause. She was a co-investigator on the randomized, double-blind Postmenopausal Estrogen/Progestin Intervention Trial that has studied the health benefits of estrogen in terms of lipid profiles and osteoporosis. Greendale's previous research has also included analyses of risk factors for osteoporosis as well as models of risk for functional outcomes of osteoporosis. She is currently the Principal Investigator for the UCLA site of the multi-center, longitudinal study of the menopausal transition, the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN). Greendale will provide expertise in areas related to the impact of hormonal changes, particularly estrogen changes, on health outcomes such as cognitive and physical functioning.
(310) 825-8253 | ggreenda@mednet.ucla.edu Peifeng "Perry" Hu is a clinical instructor of medicine in the division of Geriatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine. He is investigating the role of key antioxidants play on the health outcomes of participants in the MacArthur Study of Successful Aging.
phu@mednet.ucla.edu | more info Valter Longo Ph.D., Associate Professor of Gerontology and Biological Science.He is interested in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of aging at the cellular level and identifying the molecular pathways shared in both humans and simple organisms.
(213) 740-6212 | vlongo@usc.edu | more info Wendy Mack is an associate professor in the department of preventive medicine at USC. Her research focuses on heart disease interventions.
(323) 442-1820 | wmack@usc.edu | more info Anne Pebley is the Bixby Professor of Public Health at UCLA. She is a past president of the PAA. She is currently conducting a new longitudinal survey of families and households in Los Angeles.
(310) 794-1175 | pebley@ucla.edu | more info Edward Schneider is the former Dean of the School of Gerontology and Director of the Andrus Center. He is a physician well known for his expertise in the biology of aging whose current work is in the area of health policy and health education.
(213) 740-1354 | eschneid@usc.edu | more info Merrill Silverstein is the Hanson Family Trust Professor of Gerontology and Sociology. His research focuses on the role social and health factors play in the decision of older people to migrate into retirement communities and the role of social support in preventing physical decline and depression.
(213) 740-1713 | merrils@usc.edu | more info Gary Small is a Professor of Psychiatry and the Director of the Center on Aging at UCLA. His research focuses on cognition with specific attention to the influence of estrogen and other pharmacologic agents on risks for dementia and cognitive declines more generally. He has examined the influence of APOE-4 on cerebral glucose metabolism in relatives at risk for familial Alzheimer's Disease and the role of other biological predictors of Alzheimer's Disease.
(310) 825-0291 | gsmall@mednet.ucla.edu | more info Valentine Villa is an assistant professor at California Politechnic University Pomonona an an adjust professor in the School of Social Welfare at UCLA. She has a Ph.D. in Gerontology from USC and works on the determinants of Hispanic health using large national data sets including the AHEAD and NHIS data.
(310) 794-1805 | vvilla@ucla.edu | more info Steve Wallace is a professor at the UCLA School of Public Health and Associate Director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Dr. Wallace is a leading scholar nationally in the area of aging in communities of color, having published widely on topics including access to long-term care by diverse elderly, disparities in the consequences of health policy changes on racial/ethnic minority elderly, and aging politics. His current research focuses on the impact of managed care on access to care and the quality of life of racial and ethnic elderly.
(310) 794-0910 | swallace@ucla.edu | more info Kate Wilber is a professor at USC and former director of the California Center on Long-Term Care Integration. Her research focuses on the delivery, and effectiveness of long-term care services to the elderly.
more info
Mitchell Wong is an assistant professor at UCLA. His research focuses on racial and ethnic differences in health.
(310) 794-3322 | miwong@mednet.ucla.edu | more info Elizabeth Zelinski is a cognitive psychologist and professor whose area of expertise is in longitudinal change in cognition in older adults.
(213) 740-5156 | zelinski@usc.edu | more info