Keith Whitfield: The Health of Older African Americans
Research looks at nature and nurture
Keith E. Whitfield is taking the "versus" out of nature vs. nurture.
Whitfield, newly appointed research professor in Duke's department of psychology and neuroscience, studies issues of health and cognitive aging in North Carolina's African-American population. His two longitudinal studies on aging -- one comparing twins and the other profiling individuals -- are among the first to study genes and environmental influences together as they interact to affect minority health.
Whitfield's approach is to look at a web of factors that interact and influence each other. By studying risk factors for conditions such as hypertension and obesity, Whitfield said he hopes to better understand what allows some people to age more gracefully than others.
"We have actually been going down the road of actually trying to make an interactive model between genes and environment," he said.
Additional Reading
- K.E. Whitfield, Brandon, D.T., Robinson, E., Bennett, G., Merritt, M., Edwards, C.L. (2006). Sources of Variability in John Henryism. Journal of the National Medical Association, 98(4), 641-647.
- K.E. Whitfield, McClearn, G. (2005). Genes, Environment, Race and Health. American Psychologist, 60(1), 104-114.
- K.E. Whitfield, Allaire, J.C., & Wiggins, S.A. (2004). Relationships Between Health Factors and Everyday Problem Solving in African Americans. Health Psychology, 23(6), 641-644.
- K.E. Whitfield (2004). Closing the Gap: Improving the Health of Minority Elders in the New Millennium. Gerontological Society of America.
To study DNA and social networks at the same time, Whitfield had to break new ground. "It is a pretty different view. I was on a National Academy of Sciences report that was really trying to push this sort of thing, and our problem was that we didn't really have any existing models. But it makes sense to try to understand genes and environments impact aging," he said.
Assembling an interdisciplinary team of researchers is essential to making the approach work, Whitfield said. "We have sociologists, molecular geneticists, genetic epidemiologists who are all coming together and talking with one another.
"It's been fascinating bringing them together," added Whitfield, who said talking across disciplines poses one of the greatest challenge for his research. "Once you get past the language issue, everybody says, ‘Oh yeah, we are thinking the same thing. We just didn't know how to do it.'"
His colleagues said Whitfield's appointment adds to the department's strengths.
"Genes don't predict illness as well in one ethnic group as in another. That's at the heart of Keith's work; he's really a leader in that," said department chair Timothy J. Strauman. "Duke in general, and our department in particular, have been very interested in the interface between behavioral science and genomics. The area of gene by environment interactions is becoming increasingly important, and he's a real expert in that area."
Whitfield saw advantages in moving to North Carolina from his previous academic post at Penn State. "No one was surprised that I was interested in coming to Duke because a lot of my research is based out of here," he said. "I've been coming to North Carolina for easily 10 years. In 1995-1996, I came down on a leave of absence to get the twin study started, and in 1997 we funded and started collecting data on birth records from 23 counties around the state."
Whitfield's wife, sociologist Linda Burton, is also a new hire at Duke. The two have influenced each other and sometimes collaborate, Whitfield said. "Her area is families and poverty. Even the quantitative genetic work that I do really involves families because it involves two siblings. That's more and more where the scholarly crosstalk ends up coming between us."
Settling in to North Carolina has been easier for the couple than for most new residents. "We've had longstanding ties here so we know the area," Whitfield said. Besides his research, family ties to the area go way back: one of his stepdaughters is a Duke graduate, one attended North Carolina Central University and another lives in Charlotte.
Whitfield even had his vintage car, a 1966 Chevy El Camino, customized in the state before moving here. "I found a shop in North Carolina before we ever started being recruited by Duke. So they started working on it, and then when I told them I'm coming to Duke, it was nice because he said, ‘I'll have to give you the North Carolina discount.'"
The El Camino, a combination of car and truck with chrome wheels that Whitfield sometimes drives to campus, also adorns his laptop wallpaper. "Occasionally you will see it parked out back" in the Allen Building lot, he said. "It's still a work in progress, but if nothing else it's fun."