Disrupting Health Inequities Across the Life Course (Co-sponsored by Aging and the Life Course Section)

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

This co-sponsored session, organized by the Medical Sociology and Aging and the Life Course Sections, examines how structural inequalities shape health and well-being from early life through older adulthood. Drawing on diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, the session highlights research that investigates how health inequalities emerge, accumulate, and persist or are disrupted across the life course, as well as how aging processes intersect with gender, sexuality, race-ethnicity, class, and other dimensions of inequality. By situating health inequalities within a life course framework, this session directly engages the 2026 ASA theme, “Disrupting the Status Quo: Putting Sociology to Work for a More Equitable Society.” The session emphasizes work that documents patterns of inequality and identifies mechanisms of disruption—whether through policy, institutions, communities, or individual agency—that can advance health equality across the life span.

Populations are aging at unprecedented rates, while health inequalities are widening both within and across societies. At the same time, early-life conditions, cumulative disadvantage, and intergenerational linkages continue to shape health trajectories and magnify disparities across time. The combined perspectives of medical and life course sociology are especially powerful for understanding these challenges. Medical sociology brings critical insights into how social structures, institutions, and policies shape health, while life course scholarship highlights the timing, sequencing, and accumulation of social and health processes across decades and generations. Together, these perspectives illuminate how health inequalities originate, deepen, and can be disrupted at multiple stages of life, within and across societies. By linking these two vibrant research fields, this session underscores sociology’s unique contributions to identifying the origins, pathways, and global implications of health inequalities, while highlighting strategies for disruption. It will provide an opportunity for dialogue across subfields, fostering connections between medical sociology and aging/life course scholars while showcasing sociology’s critical role in advancing equitable health outcomes worldwide.

Sub Unit

• Medical Sociology Section / Disrupting Health Inequities Across the Life Course (Co-sponsored by Aging and the Life Course Section)

Cosponsor

• Aging and the Life Course Section

Presider

• Sarah Mustillo, University of Notre Dame

Individual Presentations

• Do the Protective Perinatal Effects of the Civil Rights Movement Extend to the Next Generation? - Allison Stolte, University of Virginia

• Intersectional Inequalities in Cognitive Aging Trajectories and Neighborhood Disorder - Richard Patti, University of Mississippi

• Socioeconomic disadvantage and adult mental health: Examining cumulative and timing effects across socioeconomic contexts - Eun Hye Lee, Indiana University-Bloomington

• Who Can Recover from Disruption? Childhood Adversity, Structural Sexism, and Gendered Social Reproduction - Yang Zhong, Florida State University

• Women’s Employment and Family Trajectories Shape Health Unequally in Later Life Across Welfare Regimes - Nanum Jeon, University of California, Los Angeles; Aitor Garcia-Aguirre, Spanish Research Council, University Carlos III of Madrid; Wesley Wang, Purdue University; Yanji Du, University of California-Los Angeles; Bruno Arpino, Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Padua; Linda Vecgaile, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR); Emilio Zagheni, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Session Organizers

• Wen Fan, Boston College

• Sarah Mustillo, University of Notre Dame