Explaining Differential Aging Health: Joining Geroscience, Medical and Social Science

Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging | Wednesday, June 24, 2026 | 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET

Eileen Crimmins, PhD

University Professor

AARP Chair in Gerontology

Co-Director, Multidisciplinary Research Training in Gerontology PhD Program

Co-Director, USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health

USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology

crimmin@usc.edu

Website

Crimmins is University Professor and holder of the AARP Chair in Gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently the co-director of the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, one of the Demography of Aging Centers supported by the U.S. National Institute on Aging. She is also the co-director of the Multidisciplinary Training in Gerontology Program and the NIA-sponsored Network on Biological Risk. Much of Crimmins’ research has focused on changes over time in health and mortality. Crimmins has been instrumental in organizing and promoting the recent integration of the measurement of biological indicators in large population surveys. 

Summary

Understanding disparities in health and longevity requires integrating social and biological perspectives on aging. This study applies the geroscience framework to examine how social, psychological, and economic exposures shape biological aging processes and subsequent health outcomes. Using data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study, we assess multiple dimensions of biological aging: physiological dysregulation, epigenetic clocks, and a composite measure of molecular and cellular hallmarks (including transcriptomics, telomere length, cellular senescence, inflammation, and mitochondrial dysfunction). We find substantial social disparities in biological aging according to multiple measures. Social and behavioral factors explain approximately 13–14% of the variance in biological aging measures, with socioeconomic status and health behaviors playing central roles. Despite strong associations between biological aging indicators and adverse health outcomes, each domain—social factors, physiological dysregulation, and molecular hallmarks—explains only a modest share (approximately 5%) of variation in six-year mortality. Social factors, however, are more strongly associated with physical and cognitive functioning than biological measures. In contrast, polygenic risk scores contribute negligibly to explaining population variation in mortality.

Learning Objectives:

• Evaluate the universality of associations between hallmarks of aging and health outcomes across different countries and populations.
• Explain the differences and biological meaning of epigenetic clocks by integrating transcriptomic and epigenetic data.
• Analyze how social determinants influence biological aging processes through their impact on hallmarks of aging.