Kate Cagney
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BIO
Kathleen Cagney, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute for Social Research and Professor of Sociology. Her work examines social inequality and its relationship to health with a focus on neighborhood, race, and aging and the life course. Her general aim is to bring insights from urban sociological theory and methods to research on health. In her neighborhood-based research she has worked with both structural and social process indicators of neighborhood context, including survey-based assessments, metrics of the built environment derived from systematic social observations, measures constructed from the Census, and sensors that assess air quality and street activity. Her experience working with secondary sources of neighborhood assessments was essential to more recent work in which she has collected primary assessments of context, validating measures of social cohesion and disorder, and constructing measures of the built environment, including commercial conditions. She is currently fielding a study (NIA R01 AG050605) that examines the social and spatial environments that older adults inhabit (their “activity space”), using smartphones to both geolocate respondents and implement brief Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) surveys. The focus of the current wave (NSF 2029384) is to examine activity spaces during to the COVID-19 pandemic. In related work, she is a Co-Investigator on the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) where she has identified data linkage opportunities to round out NSHAP’s ability to speak to the social and physical context of respondents and the impact of historical events (e.g., foreclosure crisis) on well-being. In addition, she is collaborating on the development of the Great Smoky Mountains Study of Rural Aging (GSMS-RA) – the study of early determinants of the aging experience in rural context. One component will gather data on everyday life via GPS monitoring and an EMA design coupled with actigraphy and rural context profiles.
Cagney received a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology and political science from Western Michigan University. She earned a Master’s in Public Policy degree from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. degree in health policy and management from Johns Hopkins University.
- Jennifer Caputo, Kate Cagney, Linda Waite. 2024. Keeping us young? Grandchild caregiving and older adults' cognitive functioning. Journal of Marriage and Family 86(3):633-654.
- Sarah M. Kwiatek, Liang Cai, Kate Cagney, William E. Copeland, V. Joseph Hotz, Rick H. Hoyle. 2024. Comparative assessment of the feasibility and validity of daily activity space in urban and non-urban settings. PLOS ONE 19(1):e0297492-undefined.
- Cai, Liang, Browning, Christopher R, Kate Cagney. 2024. Exposure of Neighborhood Racial and Socio-Economic Composition in Activity Space: A New Approach Adjusting for Residential Conditions. Social Forces 103(1):350-373.
- Hui Zheng, Kate Cagney, Yoonyoung Choi. 2023. Predictors of cognitive functioning trajectories among older Americans: A new investigation covering 20 years of age- and non-age-related cognitive change. PLOS ONE 18(2):e0281139.
- Caputo, Jennifer, Kate Cagney. 2023. Under Different Roofs? Coresidence With Adult Children and Parents' Mental Health Across Race and Ethnicity Over Two Decades. Demography 60(2):461-492.
- Ned English, Chang Zhao, Kevin L. Brown, Charlie Catlett, Cagney,Kathleen Anne. 2020. Making Sense of Sensor Data: How Local Environmental Conditions Add Value to Social Science Research. Social Science Computer Review
- Ellen L. Compernolle, Laura E. Finch, Louise C. Hawkley, Cagney,Kathleen Anne. 2021. Momentary loneliness among older adults: Contextual differences and their moderation by gender and race/ethnicity. Social Science & Medicine 285:114307.
- Friedman, Esther M, Houle, Jason N, Cagney,Kathleen Anne, Slaughter, Mary E, Shih, Regina A. 2021. The Foreclosure Crisis, Community Change, and the Cognitive Health of Older Adults. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B 76(5):956-967.
- Hargrove, Taylor W, García, Catherine, Cagney,Kathleen Anne. 2021. The Role of Neighborhoods in Shaping the Aging Experience During Times of Crisis. Public Policy & Aging Report 31(1):38-43.
- Lee, Haena, Caldwell, Julia T., Maene, Chieko, Cagney,Kathleen Anne, Saunders, Milda R.. 2020. Racial/Ethnic Inequities in Access to High-Quality Dialysis Treatment in Chicago: Does Neighborhood Racial/Ethnic Composition Matter?. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 7(5):854-864.