Akom Lab

Research focus

NIH R01 · 2025

The Black Zones: Harnessing Tech Enabled Community Driven Data, Big Population Health Data, & Agent-Based Models to Transform the Measures & Metrics around Longevity

Abstract Shorter Black life expectancy of African Americans (AAs) and Black Immigrants (BI) in the U.S. is well documented and has been linked to a variety of factors such as food deserts, pollution, low socioeconomic position, and resource scarcity. The Black Progress Index (BPI) launched by the Brookings Institution in 2022, comprises 13 social factors that predict longer life expectancy among Black populations at the county level, such as home and business ownership, fathers in the households, and social relationships. The BPI utilizes secondary data to reveal the factors and locales where Black people are living the longest and begins to (1) identify the environmental, social, cultural,…

From the public funding record at NIH RePORTER. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.