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Caring for biosocial complexity. Articulations of the environment in research on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
Michael Penkler
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2022
The research field of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) provides a framework for understanding how a wide range of environmental factors, such as deprivation, nutrition and stress, shape individual and population health over the course of a lifetime. DOHaD researchers face the challenge of how to conceptualize and measure ontologically diverse environments and their interactions with the developing organism over extended periods of time. Based on ethnographic research, I show how DOHaD researchers are often eager to capture what they regard as more 'complex' understandings of the environment in their work. At the same time, they are confronted with established methodological tools, disciplinary infrastructures and institutional contexts that favor simplistic articulations of the environment as distinct and mainly individual-level variables. I show how researchers struggle with these simplistic articulations of nutrition, maternal bodies and social determinants as relevant environments, which are sometimes at odds with the researchers' own normative commitments and aspirations.
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A Framework to Address Challenges in Communicating the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease
Janne Boone-heinonen
Current Environmental Health Reports, 2016
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Evolution of DOHaD: the impact of environmental health sciences
Jerrold Heindel
Journal of developmental origins of health and disease, 2014
Environmental exposures have a significant influence on the chronic health conditions plaguing children and adults. Although the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) paradigm historically has focused on nutrition, an expanding body of research specifically communicates the effects of chemical exposures on early-life development and the propagation of non-communicable disease across the lifespan. This paper provides an overview of 20 years of research efforts aimed at identifying critical windows of susceptibility to environmental exposures and the signaling changes and epigenetic influences associated with disease progression. DOHaD grants funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in 1991, 2001 and 2011 are identified by grant-analysis software, and each portfolio is analyzed for exposures, disease endpoints, windows of exposure, study design and impact on the field based on publication data. Results show that the 1991 and 2001 portfoli...
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The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) Concept: Past, Present, and Future
Tatjana Buklijas
Published in Cheryl S. Rosenfeld (ed.) The Epigenome and Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. Elsevier 2015
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Meeting Report on the 3rd International Congress on Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD)
Dennis Bier
Pediatric Research, 2007
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Entangled Lives: Implications of the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis for bioarchaeology and the life course
Rebecca Gowland
Epidemiological research since the 1980s has highlighted the consequences of early life adversity, particularly during gestation and early infancy, for adult health (the ‘Barker hypothesis’). The fast-evolving field of molecular epigenetics is providing explanatory mechanisms concerning phenotypic plasticity in response to developmental stressors and the accumulation of disease risk throughout life. In addition, there is now evidence for the heritability of poor health across generations via epigenetic modifications. This research has the potential to invoke a paradigmatic shift in how we interpret factors such as growth insults and immune response in past skeletal remains. It demonstrates that health cannot be understood in terms of immediate environmental circumstances alone. Furthermore, it requires both a theoretical and practical re-evaluation of disease biographies and the life course more generally. Individual life courses can no longer be regarded as discrete, bounded, life histories, with clearly defined beginning and end points. If socio-economic circumstances can have inter-generational effects, including disease susceptibility and growth stunting, then individual biographies should be viewed as nested or ‘embedded’ within the lives of others. This commingling of life courses may prove problematic to unravel; nevertheless, this review aims to consider the potential consequences for bioarchaeological interpretations. These include a greater consideration of: the temporal power of human skeletons and a life course approach to past health; infant health and the implications for maternal well-being; and the impact of non-proximate stressors (e.g., early life and ancestral environments) on the presence of health indicators.
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Developmental Origins of Health and Disease, resilience and social justice in the COVID era
Michael Penkler, Ruth Müller
2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on how health outcomes are unequally distributed among different population groups, with disadvantaged communities and individuals being disproportionality affected in terms of infection, morbidity and mortality, as well as vaccine access. Recently, there has been considerable debate about how social disadvantage and inequality intersect with developmental processes to result in a heightened susceptibility to environmental stressors, economic shocks and large-scale health emergencies. We argue that DOHaD Society members can make important contributions to addressing issues of inequality and improving community resilience in response to COVID-19. In order to do so, it is beneficial to engage with and adopt a social justice framework. We detail how DOHaD can align its research and policy recommendations with a social justice perspective to ensure that we contribute to improving the health of present and future generations in an equitable and socially just way.
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Synergies between the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease framework and multiple branches of evolutionary anthropology
Ruby Fried
Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 2020
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How can the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis contribute to improving health in developing countries?
Juliana Kain
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2011
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Case Studies in Global Health: Biosocial Perspectives
Felicity Aulino
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