Lauren Gaydosh Recipient of Milbank Quarterly-IAPHS Early Career Award

The Milbank Quarterly was pleased to present its Early Career Award in Population Health to Lauren Gaydosh, PhD, an Associate Professor of Sociology and faculty fellow at the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, at the 2025 Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science (IAPHS) Conference in September.

Dr. Gaydosh’s research focuses on population health disparities using life course and biosocial perspectives. Dr. Gaydosh received her PhD in Sociology, Demography, and Social Policy from Princeton University in 2015. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the US Fulbright Program. She is an investigator on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a 20,000-person study developed in the 1990s and following participants for over 30 years to understand the life course determinants of health and aging.

On receiving the award, Dr. Gaydosh remarked, “This is a period characterized by profound challenges to population health. The health of the US population is worse, and more unequal, than many of our peer countries. Population health scholars understand that the source of this US health disadvantage lies in the social and structural conditions that prevent individuals from living long and healthy lives. We are best equipped to confront these challenges if we draw on our collective strengths and leverage the evidence and insights of our interdisciplinary perspectives to tackle population health problems.”