This proposal requests five years of funding to support the continuation of the conference entitled Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences (IGSS) which has been held annually at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 2010-2017. This two-day conference will continue to showcase new empirical work on gene-environment interplay and will strive to define the contours of this new and exciting area. The 2010 conference was supported by the Population Association of America, the NICHD funded University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC), and the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado. The 2011 and 2012 meetings were supported by R13 HD066811 and the 2013-2017 meetings were supported by R13 HD078100. This new submission is seeking support to continue this conference from 2018 to 2022. As with the previous project, the goals of this proposal are: (1) to provide a venue for the leaders in the area of gene-environment interplay to share their theoretical, methodological, and substantive knowledge with one another; (2) to produce new and interdisciplinary publications in the area of gene-environment interplay; and (3) to identify new issues that are, to date, understudied in this area. As with the previous conference will continue to host a day workshop on the current methods in statistical genetics provided by leaders in the area.
The conference has a substantive focus on health, health behaviors, morbidity, and mortality. This conference will bridge genetic and social epidemiology to provide new insights into long standing public health issues. We anticipate a section of the conference to be dedicated to the policy implications of this work.
