Jason Koski/Cornell University Photography

From left: H. Elizabeth Peters, director of the Cornell Population Program (CPP); Robert Strawderman, director of CPP's statistics core; William Block, director of CPP's computing core; and David Brown, associate director of CPP.

What role do grandparents play in the lives of children in the United States today? How do ads for food products affect consumption and, ultimately, obesity in our society? Do poverty levels affect reproductive health in Africa? How do older persons who move re-establish their social relationships; how does this affect their health and well-being?

These topics and dozens more are being studied by faculty affiliated with the Cornell Population Program (CPP), a universitywide multidisciplinary program with strong support from the College of Human Ecology (34 of CPP's 71 affiliates are from the college) and spanning 16 Cornell departments.

The center acts as a hub for research connected to population trends, bringing together faculty to share ideas and providing access to resources including data sets, training in using statistical methodologies and help with preparing and submitting grant proposals.

"The idea is to encourage people from different academic backgrounds to work together," said Alan Mathios, the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Dean of the College of Human Ecology. "I believe these collaborations are where the major breakthroughs happen."

Established in 2007 to encourage cross-disciplinary innovation, boost research funding and improve interdisciplinary training, the CPP is housed at Cornell's Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center (BLCC). The program recently received a $1.15 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch.

"We're bringing social science researchers from across the university to an intellectual home to spark collaborations that wouldn't otherwise happen," said Dan Lichter, director of the BLCC, director of the CPP's development core, a sociology professor, and the Ferris Family Professor of Policy Analysis and Management.

More than demographics

That means delving deeper than just the birth, death and migration rates that are traditionally associ-ated with the field of demographics, explained said H. Elizabeth Peters, director of the CPP and a professor of policy analysis and management. "It's more about understanding the impact of these trends on people's lives. So if you're looking at the aging of the population, what does that mean in terms of housing and the health care system and the workforce?"

The program focuses on three broad areas: families and children, health behaviors and disparities, and poverty and inequality, both domestically and internationally.

"We have groups of researchers working in the developed country context, and different groups of researchers working in developing countries, often on overlapping issues," Peters said. "The population program brings them together and helps them benefit from the knowledge each has to offer."

More than just research

The CPP also offers seminars and training sessions for CPP affiliates and helps researchers prepare grant proposals and manage grants. William Block, director of the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research, provides large-scale computational services, helps researchers manage statistical databases and offers access to unique sets of demographic data, including restricted-access census data only available at nine institutes across the nation.

"It's quite an advantage to have access to these large data sets while you're sitting right here in Ithaca," Block said. "The CPP is giving Cornell a focus on population data that we didn't have before, and that's going to open up new doors for dozens of researchers."

Robert Strawderman, professor of statistics, aids in developing and applying statistical methodologies appropriate for addressing the increasingly complex demographic questions being explored by population researchers.

CPP also provides seed grants and workshops to promote new grant proposals and help young scholars develop the skills and knowledge they need to become the leading researchers of the future.

In addition, the program is in the process of developing a campuswide graduate minor in demography.

"We'll be training a whole new generation of population researchers," Peters said. "They'll be able to assist faculty with research, which will open the door to new funding opportunities. In the long term, they'll go out into the world with a greater understanding of how these population changes impact people's lives."

In addition to NIH, the CPP is funded by a seed grant from the Office of the Vice Provost for the Social Sciences; BLCC and CPP provide matching grants, cost sharing and other financial and administrative services to support the research of CPP affiliates.

Sheri Hall is assistant communications director in the College of Human Ecology. This article is abridged from Human Ecology magazine.