Networks as mechanisms of diffusion, vectors of disease risk, systems of resource distribution

H-P Kohler, Behrman, and Watkins pioneered the collection and analysis of network data in their Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP). This and related work substantiate the 3rd of PARC’s themes—“the many facets of networks.ʺ Initially, the MDICP focused on establishing the role of social networks in reducing the spread HIV/AIDS (e.g., church groups) and coping with its effects on surviving spouses and children. More recently, H‐P Kohler and colleagues focused on networks as a contagion vector. With former Penn doctoral student Helleringer, he used a PARC pilot to conduct a population‐ based study of an island with a high prevalence of the disease to study the transmission and diversification of HIV‐1 using molecular genetics and complete sexual network data. Rather than a large network of super‐spreaders of HIV, Kohler and Hellinger’s data reveal a large, interconnected web, based on 65% of the population having only 2 or 3 partners over 3 yrs. With parallel NIA grants, Soldo and Henretta have been conducting network research primarily using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). As former Co‐PIs of HRS, they engineered the collection of individual family data on up to 4 generations of a family, for both spouse/partners, over 5‐9 waves.1 In several papers employing multi‐level models, they examine the flow of resources from parent to adult children and from individual offspring to parents. They have pioneered the notion of the “family culture” concept to explain differences between families as discrete entities. They found strong support for the unique effects of a family legacy of assisting kin. 1 The linked family files they created, e.g. parents to all children and grandchildren, including step children and their offspring, are available. In Core D we describe the release of the code used to construct these file; subsequently they hope to negotiate an arrangement with HRS that would allow them to distribute the linked files directly through PARC.