Peisen Yang, MSW
Peisen Yang, MSW, is a PhD student at the University of Connecticut, School of Social Work. His research interests lie in aging and health, with a focus on population health and the social determinants of health among older adults. He earned the master’s degree from Peking University, where he was involved in multiple research projects funded by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation, the Chinese National Social Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education, and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics. Through these experiences, he developed skills in quantitative research design and academic writing.
His research focuses on understanding how social inequities shape later-life health outcomes across the life course. Specifically, he is interested in socioeconomic status differences in older adults’ health outcomes, the long-term effects of early-life adversities on later-life health, and the research on healthy life expectancy. His research aims to explore how targeted interventions and social policies can mitigate the long-term health burden and accumulated disadvantages from early-life adversity, and ultimately to empower vulnerable populations to achieve health equity in later life. At the same time, he aims to work across disciplines, drawing on theories and methods from sociology, demography, and social epidemiology to study aging populations.
Beyond these continuing research interests, he is particularly interested in a broader historical question: how major social and historical events—such as economic crises, political and social transitions, or public health emergencies—shape the health trajectories of different birth cohorts. He is interested in bringing the historical sociological perspective into population health research, and examining how macro-level changes become embodied as micro-level health consequences over time.
MSW
Peking University – Beijing, China
The areas of research interest:
Social determinants of health
Aging and health inequities
Life course epidemiology
Public health crises and population health
Historical sociology
| mkc26001@uconn.edu |