About Us

Welcome to Aging Activities at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)  of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Our mission is to perform research and analysis and to disseminate data on the health and health care utilization of aging Americans. We are located in the Office of Analysis and Epidemiology and are supported by the National Institute on Aging.

Much of our effort is currently dedicated to the following projects:

Data Warehouse on Trends in Health and Aging

Longitudinal Studies of Aging

Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics

Aging Research: See staff bios (below) for our areas of interest.

Please feel free to Contact Aging Activities with feedback about our efforts. You may also be able to meet us in person at upcoming aging-related conferences or events. Check the Aging Activities What’s New page to see listings of upcoming events.

Staff

James Lubitz, Acting Chief, Aging and Chronic Disease Statistics Branch
Mr. Lubitz worked for many years at the Health Care Financing Administration (now Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) on research on risk adjustment for capitation, cancer care costs, and outcomes and end of life costs. He was on the health reform task forces of the Bush (elder) and Clinton administrations and was a consultant on health reform to the governments of Argentina and Chile. His current research is on life expectancy and health care costs and on compression of morbidity.

Julie Dawson Weeks, Demographer
Dr. Weeks is the project director for the Longitudinal Studies of Aging, a family of surveys that follow the health and health care utilization of two cohorts of Americans as they move into and through the oldest ages.  She has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she specialized in demography and social psychology.  Her research interests include health transitions and care utilization patterns in late life, relationships between elders’ social environment and physical status, and the cognitive and methodological issues associated with interviewing the elderly.

Yelena Gorina, Statistician
Yelena Gorina received her M.S. in mathematics from St. Petersburg State University (Russia). She’s been with NCHS since November 1998 and worked primarily in the development, maintenance, and dissemination of the Data Warehouse on Trends in Health and Aging. She is working on her M.P.H. at Johns Hopkins University. Her current interests include researching HIV among the aging population and development of new topics in the Data Warehouse, such as incontinence, diabetes, and socioeconomic status indicators.

Ellen Kramarow, Demographer
Dr. Kramarow received a Ph.D. in Demography and Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and did post-doctoral work at the University of Michigan Population Studies Center. Her research interests include active life expectancy and disability status of the older population.

Laura Pratt, Epidemiologist
Dr. Pratt received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health. Her dissertation examined the relationship between major depression and heart attack in a prospective study with 13 years of followup. Her current research interests include depression, cognitive impairment, depression and medical comorbidities, mental health, and measures of mental health in the elderly.

Margie Goulding, Health Statistician
Ms. Goulding’s educational background includes a B.A. in economics, a master’s degree in International Relations, a master’s degree in International Health, and a Ph.D. in Health Services Research (Johns Hopkins University). Her work experience includes 7 years analyzing international economic policy issues for the U.S. Treasury Department, 2 years of assisting with data collection and analysis for various health research projects, and 2 years at CDC/NCHS conducting research on the prescribing of inappropriate prescription drugs to older adults. Ms. Goulding’s broad research interests include examining the quantity and quality of health care services received by older adults.

Kristen Robinson, Demographer
Kristen Robinson is the staff director for the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics. Her work focuses primarily on improving and disseminating aging-related data and statistics. She received a dual Ph.D. in sociology and demography from the Pennsylvania State University in 1997.

Liming Cai, Economist
Dr. Cai received his Ph.D. in economics from Ohio State in 1998. He’s been with NCHS since November 1998 and worked on various projects. His research is focused on the study of disability dynamics among the elderly population. In particular, he is interested in developing statistical models to more realistically describe the aging process, and to relate changes in health status to lifetime medical expenditures.

Sergey Yagodin, Programmer
Dr. Yagodin received his master’s degree in Biostatistics in 1977 and Ph.D. in Human and Animal Physiology from Sechenov's Institute of Evolutionary Biochemistry and Physiology, St. Petersburg, Russia in 1980. He has been with NCHS since November 2000 and worked on various projects. He supported the Data Warehouse on Trends in Health and Aging using SAS and Visual Basic tools.

Michael T. Molla, Demographer
Dr. Molla received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include demography of aging, summary measures of health, and the health and aging of minority groups

Robert Francis, Jr., Programmer
Dr. Francis received his Ph.D. in Experimental/Social Psychology from Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas in 1986.  He is a contractor for NOVA Research Co., and has been with NCHS off and on since January 1997 when he worked on the Comparative Analysis of ICD-9 and 10 Codes for the Division of Vital Statistics.

Kathleen Haddad is a fellow of the Association of Schools of Public Health.  A doctoral candidate in health services research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Ms. Haddad is conducting her dissertation research on the relationship between disability and geriatric depression, using the Women’s Health and Aging Study and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. Ms. Haddad’s educational background includes a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Cincinnati. She has served as health policy analyst for the American College of Physicians, director of health policy for Families USA, communications director for the New York State Assembly majority leader, and health reporter for the Albany Times Union. Most recently, Ms. Haddad coordinated an RWJ-funded research group on chronic care and co-morbidity at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. Ms. Haddad’s broad research interests in aging include depression, disability, mental health treatment, disparities in geriatric mental health, and behavioral and sociological influences on geriatric health.

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This page last reviewed October 15, 2004