Advisory Board

Dr. Burgard’s research interests focus on the way systems of stratification and inequality impact the health of people and populations. She currently studies racial/ethnic and gender-based disparities in working conditions and occupational careers, the effect of these inequalities on health, and the impact of an individual’s working life on the well-being of other family members. She also examines racial/ethnic and socioeconomic determinants of children’s health in South Africa and Brazil.

Dr. Freedman is a Research Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. She is currently the Director of the Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging. Over the past decade Freedman has held leadership roles in several national survey efforts. She has co-led the National Health and Aging Trends Study and the National Study of Caregiving since their inception and has served as an Associate Director of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Through these efforts she has been instrumental in disseminating new measures to study disability and care needs of older adults. She has published extensively on the topics of population aging, disability trends and long-term care and has investigated the connections among disability, time use and wellbeing in later life.

Dr. Weir is a Research Professor in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research and Director of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). He has led the transformation of the HRS into a world-leading biosocial survey combining its traditional excellence as a longitudinal survey with direct biological measures of health, genetics, linked medical and long-term care records from the Medicare system, and enriched psychological measurement. His research increasingly includes comparative analyses from the international family of HRS studies that now cover more than half the world’s population.

Dr. Langa is the Cyrus Sturgis Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and Institute for Social Research, a Research Scientist in the Veterans Affairs Center for Clinical Management Research, and an Associate Director of the Institute of Gerontology, all at the University of Michigan. He is also Associate Director of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a National Institute on Aging funded longitudinal study of 20,000 adults in the United States.

Dr. Langa’s research focuses on the epidemiology and costs of chronic disease in older adults, with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.