An in-depth exploration of how early life events and experiences during critical periods of development lead to outcomes of health and well-being or disease in later life. Includes discussion of the accumulation of social determinants of health across the lifespan and at sensitive periods in development.
Athena Title
Early Life Influences on Aging
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in GRNT 7150
Non-Traditional Format
This course will be taught 95% or more online.
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student learning Outcomes
Students will be able to interpret health outcomes in later life from a developmental trajectory perspective.
Students will be able to evaluate the scholarly evidence for early life influences on health in later stages of life.
Students will be able to compare and contrast normative developmental stages across the lifespan, including how their disruption impacts health in older adulthood.
Students will be able to evaluate current public health initiatives with regard to how effectively they address determinants of health from a lifespan health-development perspective.
Students will be able to assess interventions aimed at reducing adversity and/or increasing resilience with reference to structural inequality and the macro systems within which they are implemented.
Students will be able to develop an intervention to either decrease adversity or increase resilience for a particularly vulnerable group.
Topical Outline
Defining Health:
1. Reductionist vs. holistic models
2. Overview of a life-course health-development framework
Early Life Development:
1. Historical context of developmental science
2. Applying a developmental framework to health
3. Basics of prenatal development
4. Developmental origins of health and disease (DoHaD) model
5. Infancy and early childhood cognitive, social, and emotional development
6. Attachment as a foundational piece of lifespan health development
7. Fetal origins of major adult health diseases – e.g., CVD, diabetes (including mental health)
8. Prenatal programming of weight set point and metabolism
Adversity and Resilience:
1. The biology of stress and resilience
2. Influence of relationships with early caregivers on health and wellbeing across the lifespan
3. Adverse Childhood Events (ACEs) and adult physiological and mental health
4. Lifespan stress and stigma as threats to health
5. Interventions for resilience and prevention of ACEs
6. Social and cultural contributions to resilience across the lifespan
7. Resilience and aging well
We Never Stop Developing:
1. Adult development as a continuation of early life development
2. Relationships
3. Identity
4. Cognition
5. Sensation and perception
