Mass incarceration has profoundly restructured the life courses of not only marginalized adult men for whom this event is now so prevalent but also their families. We examined research published from 2000 to 2017 on the consequences of parental incarceration for child health in the United States. In addition to focusing on specific health outcomes, we also considered broader indicators of child well-being because there has been little research on the association between parental incarceration and objectively measured child health outcomes. Our findings support 4 conclusions. First, paternal incarceration is negatively associated-possibly causally so-with a range of child health and well-being indicators. Second, although some research has suggested a negative association between maternal incarceration and child health, the evidence on this front is mixed. Third, although the evidence for average effects of paternal incarceration on child health and well-being is strong, research has also suggested that some key factors moderate the association between paternal incarceration and child health and well-being. Finally, because of the unequal concentration of parental incarceration and the negative consequences this event has for children, mass incarceration has increased both intracountry inequality in child health in the United States and intercountry inequality in child health between the United States and other developed democracies. In light of these important findings, investment in data infrastructure-with emphasis on data sets that include reliable measures of parental incarceration and child health and data sets that facilitate causal inferences-is needed to understand the child health effects of parental incarceration.

What percentage of Americans have ever had a family member incarcerated? To answer this question, we designed the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). The survey was administered in the summer of 2018 by NORC at the University of Chicago using their AmeriSpeak Panel. It was funded by FWD.us, which released a separate report using the data. The data show that 45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated. The incarceration of an immediate family member was most prevalent for blacks (63 percent) but common for whites (42 percent) and Hispanics (48 percent) as well. College graduates had a lower risk of having a family member incarcerated, but the risk for black college graduates was comparatively high. The most common form of family member incarceration was the incarceration of a sibling.

Recent theoretical and methodological advances in urban sociology, including spatially located data, provide new opportunities to consider the joint influence of mobility and place in urban social life. This review defines the concept of activity space, describes its origins in urban sociology, and examines the extent to which activity space approaches have advanced sociological research in four substantive domains—spatial inequality and segregation, social connectedness and engagement, crime and offending patterns, and health and health-related behavior. It then describes the evolution of methods for location tracking and new approaches that hold promise for maximizing urban mobility and activity space contributions. It then discusses how location data may be augmented to enhance our sociological understanding of the structure, meaning, and implications of the places people visit or traverse in daily life. We close with new directions for activity space research, emphasizing how such work could enable comparative contextual research. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Sociology, Volume 46 is July 30, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

The vast expansion of the US penal system since the 1970s is often characterized in terms of the nearly fivefold increase in incarceration rates. 1,2 Before this period of mass incarceration, having a family member imprisoned was a rare event affecting only the most unfortunate families. Having a family member imprisoned is common in the United States today; roughly 8% of US children born in 1990 had a father imprisoned by the time the child was age 14. 3 Parental imprisonment is also unequally distributed by race: 25% of African American children and 3% of white children have a parent who is imprisoned at some point in their childhood. 4 High and unequally distributed rates of paternal imprisonment in US families also imply high and unequally distributed rates of imprisonment of adult family members, that is, adults aged 18 who are no longer considered minors, which includes siblings, adult children, and partners. 1 Maternal imprisonment, although less common than paternal imprisonment, occurs more frequently among African American children than among white children. 4 Estimates generated using data from the 2006 General Social Survey showed that 44% of African American women and 12% of white women had a family member-counting not only immediate family members but also aunts, uncles, and cousins-who was imprisoned. 5 All of these estimates, moreover, markedly understate the burden of family member incarceration (that is, prison and jail incarceration), because most current surveys include information only on prisoners.The prevalence and concentration of imprisonment among the most socioeconomically disadvantaged Americans has caused concern about how mass incarceration could affect racial disparities in the health and well-being of US families. 1,6-8 Although we recognize that other populations (eg, Hispanic people) have also been disproportionately affected by exponential increases in incarceration in recent decades, 9 we focus largely on the implications of this phenomenon for health disparities between African American and white populations. Not only is the difference in cumulative risk of incarceration the largest among these 2 groups, 4 but extensive criminal justice and health disparities literature also has focused on the experiences of African Americans relative to white people. Much, although certainly not all, of the research on the health consequences of incarceration has focused on how parental incarceration affects the health and well-being of children, [9][10][11][12][13][14] with an eye toward considering the macro-level consequences of mass incarceration for disparities in child well-being (eg, consequences related to education, housing, and behavioral problems). 15,16 Far less research has considered the health consequences of having an incarcerated family member, particularly for those men and women who are left to manage household and childcare responsibilities during the time that their loved one is incarcerated, emotionally and financially support the family member who is incarcerated, and i...

Objectives To examine patterns of change in later-life social connectedness: (a) the extent and direction of changes in different aspects of social connectedness, including size, density, and composition of social networks, network turnover, and three types of community involvement and (b) the sequential nature of these changes over time. Method We use three waves of nationally representative data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, collected from 2005/2006 to 2015/2016. Respondents were between the ages of 67 and 95 at follow-up. Types of changes in their social connectedness between the two successive 5-year periods are compared to discern over-time change patterns. Results Analyses reveal stability or growth in the sizes of most older adults’ social networks, their access to non-kin ties, network expansiveness, as well as several forms of community involvement. Most older adults experienced turnover within their networks, but losses and additions usually offset each other, resulting in generally stable network size and structural features. Moreover, when older adults reported decreases (increases) in a given form of social connectedness during the first half of the study period, these changes were typically followed by countervailing increases (decreases) over the subsequent 5-year period. This general pattern holds for both network and community connectedness. Discussion There is an overwhelming tendency toward either maintaining or rebalancing previous structures and levels of both personal network connectedness and community involvement. This results in overall homeostasis. We close by discussing the need for a unifying theoretical framework that can explain these patterns.

Bioregulatory systems medicine (BrSM) is a paradigm that aims to advance current medical practices. The basic scientific and clinical tenets of this approach embrace an interconnected picture of human health, supported largely by recent advances in systems biology and genomics, and focus on the implications of multi-scale interconnectivity for improving therapeutic approaches to disease. This article introduces the formal incorporation of these scientific and clinical elements into a cohesive theoretical model of the BrSM approach. The authors review this integrated body of knowledge and discuss how the emergent conceptual model offers the medical field a new avenue for extending the armamentarium of current treatment and healthcare, with the ultimate goal of improving population health.

Objectives Family members and friends who live nearby may be especially well-positioned to provide social support and companionship for community-residing older adults, but prior research has not examined the distribution and characteristics of local ties in older adults’ networks. We hypothesize that local ties are newer, more frequently accessed, and more embedded in the network, and that social disadvantage and neighborhood conditions structure older adults’ access to local ties. Methods We use egocentric network data from 15,137 alters named by 3,735 older adults in Wave 3 of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). We conduct dyadic analysis to compare characteristics of local and nonlocal ties. Logistic regression models estimate how personal and neighborhood characteristics are associated with naming local kin and local non-kin ties. Results Nearly half of the older adults named at least one local network tie, and about 60% of these local ties are non-kin. Local ties are newer, frequently accessed, and highly embedded in older adults’ networks. Local kin ties are most common among socially disadvantaged older adults. Local non-kin ties are most common among white older adults and those who live in areas with high levels of collective efficacy, although local non-kin ties are also associated with residence in high-poverty neighborhoods. Discussion Local ties may bring unique benefits for community-residing older adults, but their availability is likely structured by residential mobility, neighborhood context, disparities in resources, and support needs. Future research should consider their implications for health and well-being.

The use of complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) is typically modeled as a function of individual health beliefs, including changes in perceptions of conventional medicine, an orientation toward more holistic care, and increasing patient involvement in health care decision-making. Expanding on research that shows that health-related behavior is shaped by social networks, this paper examines the possibility that CAM usage is partly a function of individuals’ social network structure. We argue that people are more likely to adopt CAM when they function as bridges between network members who are otherwise not (or poorly) connected to each other. This circumstance not only provides individuals with access to a wider range of information about treatment options, it also reduces the risk of sanctioning by network members if one deviates from conventional forms of treatment. We test this idea using data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), a nationally representative study of older Americans. Analyses of egocentric social network data show that older adults with bridging potential in their networks are significantly more likely to engage in a greater number of types of CAM. We close by discussing alternative explanations of these findings and their potential implications for research on CAM usage.