Meena Kumari, Professor of Biological and Social Epidemiology at ISER, discusses her pioneering work combining biological markers from blood samples with the socio-economic longitudinal data collected from participants in Understanding Society, in a new podcast for The Guardian’s Science Weekly series.
Professor Kumari is a leading expert in biomarkers and genetics, and has worked to apply insights from these areas to better understand ageing, cardiovascular disease, and health inequalities using the Whitehall II cohort study of British civil servants and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
She continues to lead research on the social-biological interface and genetic epidemiology as an investigator for Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study.
Professor Kumari’s work has recently featured in The Guardian, along with a new study with Dr Apostolos Davillas unpicking the impact of poverty on the onset of ill health and earlier ageing.