Adding Residential Address History Data to Project Talent: Unveiling the Long-Term Effects of Neighborhood Characteristics on Cognitive Risk and Resiliency

About This Grant

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) are progressive diseases whose etiologies are characterized by a combination of age, genetics, and environmental factors. However, the impact of environmental factors on ADRD risk and resilience remains unclear due to a lack of contextual data from across the life course. Research investigating the impact of neighborhood characteristics on health outcomes is largely cross-sectional, and most longitudinal cohort studies lack lifetime residential address history data. Augmenting longitudinal cohort studies with neighborhood-level contextual data can accelerate our understanding of how the places we live influence cognitive health trajectories. The purpose of this project is to develop a residential address history to include all addresses across adulthood for each participant in the Project Talent (PT) cohort—a nationally representative sample of older adults in the United States. Project Talent includes a rich source of adolescent and early adulthood data. We will geocode each address to develop a geospatial data set consisting of ZIP codes and census geographic designations. This data set will facilitate linking PT data to contextual data sets to support research on the cumulative impact of social and environmental factors on cognitive health trajectories. This project is responsive to the National Institute on Aging Strategic Plan Goals B, F, and G, and to NOT- AG-21-045—specifically, augmenting existing longitudinal cohort studies to address questions related to ADRD. Aim 1: Develop a residential history data set of Project Talent participants. We will identify PT participants in the LexisNexis database and collect all recorded physical street addresses from 1960 to the present to develop a comprehensive history of places participants lived across adulthood. Based on previous work conducted over the past decade, we anticipate that we will successfully link approximately 80% (n = 301,613) of the sample to a unique record in LexisNexis. We will also collect the time at each residence (date first seen and date last seen) to develop a residential history data set. Aim 2: Geocode lifetime residential addresses of Project Talent participants. We will geocode each address in the PT residential address history data set to generate geographic coordinates. We will partner with GeoLytics, a commercial geocoding vendor, to process street addresses into spatial coordinates and capture census geographic designations (e.g., block group and tract codes) for each available decade. Aim 3: Develop and disseminate geospatial data sets. We will develop a geospatial data set that includes ZIP codes and census geographic designations across each available decade (1960–2020), and time (year first seen and year last seen) at each location. This data set will facilitate linking PT data to contextual data sets to collect policy, social, and environmental exposures over time, laying the foundation for research on the cumulative impacts of exogenous factors on health trajectories, including ADRD risk and resiliency. The data will be made available at no cost to researchers through AIR.