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Jennifer Beam Dowd

PhD
Deputy Director, Professor of Demography and Population Health

Jenn Dowd is a quantitative social and health scientist with interdisciplinary training in demography, economics, epidemiology and infectious disease. Her research seeks to understand how social and biological processes interact over the life course and how social factors “get under the skin” to impact health. She has studied how socioeconomic status shapes immune function and risk of infections as well as links between infections and chronic diseases of aging. On-going projects include understanding the social determinants of the human microbiome and the causes of stalling life expectancy in the US and UK as Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Project MORTAL. She is currently researching social and demographic factors related to COVID-19, and is also part of an all-female team of PhD health scientists interpreting and curating COVID-19 and other science for a general audience at Those Nerdy Girls.

She is a highly cited scholar who has published over 100 articles in journals in interdisciplinary journals such as the Proceedings of National Academies of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and Social Science and Medicine. She has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on multiple large grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health on topics including the role of infections and immunity in health inequalities and social and population science approaches to the microbiome. She is a former elected member of the Population Association of America (PAA) Board of Directors and on the Editorial Board of the flagship journal Demography. In 2022, she was awarded the Clifford C. Clogg Award for Mid-Career Achievement by the PAA.

Dr. Dowd received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004 in Demography and Economics from the Office of Population Research. She did postdoctoral training in Epidemiology as a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar in the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Michigan. She has previously held positions in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, and the CUNY School of Public Health/CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR), City University of New York.

 

Publications

Wednesday, 12 March 2025
Xu, L. et al. (2025) “Compositional analysis of lymphocytes and their relationship with health outcomes: findings from the health and retirement study”, Immunity & Ageing, 22(1).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 19 December 2024
Polizzi, A. et al. (2024) “Indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cause-of-death analysis of life expectancy changes in 24 countries, 2015 to 2022”, PNAS Nexus, 4(1).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Monday, 04 November 2024
Dowd, J., Polizzi, A. and Tilstra, A. (2024) “Progress Stalled? The Uncertain Future of Mortality in High‐Income Countries”, Population and Development Review [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 01 August 2024
Bridger Staatz, C. et al. (2024) “Midlife health in Britain and the United States: a comparison of two nationally representative cohorts.”, International journal of epidemiology, 53(5), p. dyae127.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 20 June 2024
Gimeno, L. et al. (2024) “Cohort differences in physical health and disability in the United States and Europe”, Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 79(8).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Saturday, 08 June 2024
Polizzi, A. et al. (2024) “Why is life expectancy in England and Wales falling behind? A cause-of-death decomposition approach.”, SocArXiv.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Cheetham, N. et al. (2024) “An undue emphasis on rural older adults in the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report 2023?”, Clinical Medicine, 24(3).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 21 March 2024
Dowd, J. et al. (2024) “US exceptionalism? International trends in midlife mortality”, International Journal of Epidemiology, 53(2).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Wednesday, 17 January 2024
Gimeno, L. et al. (2024) “Generational differences in physical health and disability in the United States and Europe.”, medRxiv [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
Polizzi, A. and Dowd, J. (2024) “Working-age mortality is still an important driver of stagnating life expectancy in the United States”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(4).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Monday, 01 January 2024
Degtiareva, E. et al. (2024) “Cause-Specific Excess Mortality in the US During the COVID-19 Pandemic”, medRxiv.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 24 December 2023
Bridger Staatz, C. et al. (2023) “Midlife health in Britain and the US: a comparison of two nationally representative cohorts”, medRxiv [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 17 August 2023
Dowd, J. et al. (2023) “Comparing trends in mid-life ‘deaths of despair’ in the USA, Canada and UK, 2001–2019: is the USA an anomaly?”, BMJ Open, 13(8).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Friday, 30 June 2023
Piltch-Loeb, R. et al. (2023) “What were the information voids? A qualitative analysis of questions asked by Dear Pandemic readers between august 2020-august 2021 ”, Journal of Health Communication, 28(S1), pp. 25–33.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Wednesday, 21 June 2023
Noppert, G. et al. (2023) “Biological expressions of early life trauma in the immune system of older adults”, PLoS ONE, 18(6).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Monday, 27 February 2023
Angus, C. et al. (2023) “Increases in ‘deaths of despair’ during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and the United Kingdom”, Public Health, 218, pp. 92–96.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Dowd, J. et al. (2023) “US Exceptionalism? International Trends in Midlife Mortality”, medRxiv.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Geistlinger, L. et al. (2023) “BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures”, NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Golos, A. et al. (2023) “Dear Pandemic: A topic modeling analysis of COVID-19 information needs among readers of an online science communication campaign.”, PloS one, 18(3), p. e0281773.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Geistlinger, L. et al. (2023) “BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures”, NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
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Email
jennifer.dowd@demography.ox.ac.uk
Links
Website
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google Scholar
BlueSky

Recent

news
17 Feb 2025

LCDS seminar: Unraveling gene-environment interactions in child health and development

news
20 Dec 2024

New study reveals the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on other causes of death

news
3 Oct 2024

US adults in worse health than British counterparts at midlife

Jennifer Beam Dowd

PhD
Deputy Director, Professor of Demography and Population Health
This is the alt text
Email
jennifer.dowd@demography.ox.ac.uk
Links
Website
Twitter
LinkedIn
Google Scholar
BlueSky

Jenn Dowd is a quantitative social and health scientist with interdisciplinary training in demography, economics, epidemiology and infectious disease. Her research seeks to understand how social and biological processes interact over the life course and how social factors “get under the skin” to impact health. She has studied how socioeconomic status shapes immune function and risk of infections as well as links between infections and chronic diseases of aging. On-going projects include understanding the social determinants of the human microbiome and the causes of stalling life expectancy in the US and UK as Principal Investigator of the ERC Consolidator Project MORTAL. She is currently researching social and demographic factors related to COVID-19, and is also part of an all-female team of PhD health scientists interpreting and curating COVID-19 and other science for a general audience at Those Nerdy Girls.

She is a highly cited scholar who has published over 100 articles in journals in interdisciplinary journals such as the Proceedings of National Academies of Sciences, Nature Human Behaviour, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and Social Science and Medicine. She has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on multiple large grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health on topics including the role of infections and immunity in health inequalities and social and population science approaches to the microbiome. She is a former elected member of the Population Association of America (PAA) Board of Directors and on the Editorial Board of the flagship journal Demography. In 2022, she was awarded the Clifford C. Clogg Award for Mid-Career Achievement by the PAA.

Dr. Dowd received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004 in Demography and Economics from the Office of Population Research. She did postdoctoral training in Epidemiology as a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar in the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Michigan. She has previously held positions in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King's College London, and the CUNY School of Public Health/CUNY Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR), City University of New York.

 

Publications

Wednesday, 12 March 2025
Xu, L. et al. (2025) “Compositional analysis of lymphocytes and their relationship with health outcomes: findings from the health and retirement study”, Immunity & Ageing, 22(1).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 19 December 2024
Polizzi, A. et al. (2024) “Indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cause-of-death analysis of life expectancy changes in 24 countries, 2015 to 2022”, PNAS Nexus, 4(1).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Monday, 04 November 2024
Dowd, J., Polizzi, A. and Tilstra, A. (2024) “Progress Stalled? The Uncertain Future of Mortality in High‐Income Countries”, Population and Development Review [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 01 August 2024
Bridger Staatz, C. et al. (2024) “Midlife health in Britain and the United States: a comparison of two nationally representative cohorts.”, International journal of epidemiology, 53(5), p. dyae127.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 20 June 2024
Gimeno, L. et al. (2024) “Cohort differences in physical health and disability in the United States and Europe”, Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 79(8).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Saturday, 08 June 2024
Polizzi, A. et al. (2024) “Why is life expectancy in England and Wales falling behind? A cause-of-death decomposition approach.”, SocArXiv.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Tuesday, 23 April 2024
Cheetham, N. et al. (2024) “An undue emphasis on rural older adults in the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report 2023?”, Clinical Medicine, 24(3).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 21 March 2024
Dowd, J. et al. (2024) “US exceptionalism? International trends in midlife mortality”, International Journal of Epidemiology, 53(2).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Wednesday, 17 January 2024
Gimeno, L. et al. (2024) “Generational differences in physical health and disability in the United States and Europe.”, medRxiv [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Tuesday, 16 January 2024
Polizzi, A. and Dowd, J. (2024) “Working-age mortality is still an important driver of stagnating life expectancy in the United States”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(4).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Monday, 01 January 2024
Degtiareva, E. et al. (2024) “Cause-Specific Excess Mortality in the US During the COVID-19 Pandemic”, medRxiv.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 24 December 2023
Bridger Staatz, C. et al. (2023) “Midlife health in Britain and the US: a comparison of two nationally representative cohorts”, medRxiv [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Thursday, 17 August 2023
Dowd, J. et al. (2023) “Comparing trends in mid-life ‘deaths of despair’ in the USA, Canada and UK, 2001–2019: is the USA an anomaly?”, BMJ Open, 13(8).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Friday, 30 June 2023
Piltch-Loeb, R. et al. (2023) “What were the information voids? A qualitative analysis of questions asked by Dear Pandemic readers between august 2020-august 2021 ”, Journal of Health Communication, 28(S1), pp. 25–33.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Wednesday, 21 June 2023
Noppert, G. et al. (2023) “Biological expressions of early life trauma in the immune system of older adults”, PLoS ONE, 18(6).
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Monday, 27 February 2023
Angus, C. et al. (2023) “Increases in ‘deaths of despair’ during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and the United Kingdom”, Public Health, 218, pp. 92–96.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Dowd, J. et al. (2023) “US Exceptionalism? International Trends in Midlife Mortality”, medRxiv.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Geistlinger, L. et al. (2023) “BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures”, NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Golos, A. et al. (2023) “Dear Pandemic: A topic modeling analysis of COVID-19 information needs among readers of an online science communication campaign.”, PloS one, 18(3), p. e0281773.
Jennifer Beam Dowd
Sunday, 01 January 2023
Geistlinger, L. et al. (2023) “BugSigDB captures patterns of differential abundance across a broad range of host-associated microbial signatures”, NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY [Preprint].
Jennifer Beam Dowd
  • Load More

Recent

news
17 Feb 2025

LCDS seminar: Unraveling gene-environment interactions in child health and development

news
20 Dec 2024

New study reveals the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on other causes of death

news
3 Oct 2024

US adults in worse health than British counterparts at midlife

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