Ali Crandall, a BYU Public Health professor, is currently in the process of conducting foundational research in the field by studying health over multiple generations.
Crandall focuses on teaching and researching family health and its correlations and impacts on the public health field.
In the last year, Crandall has begun an incredibly large research endeavor. The goal of the research is to study families over long spans of time and how those families affect an individual’s physical and mental health over multiple generations.
Crandall and her team of students, alongside other public health faculty Carl Hanson and Briana Magnusson, have looked at a multitude of subjects related to families and how they may be impacted generationally.
The research studies have included examining the health of a family over time and whether a healthier generation positively impacts future generations.
One study looked at how healthy habits in a family can be passed down. Strong habits such as exercise, encouraging your family to eat healthy, and following medical recommendations have psychological and physical benefits for descendants of a grandparent.
The research also looks at how stories about grandparents and parents being passed down can have psychological benefits for the child, with the younger generation having a better understanding of their roots, causing them to engage more in volunteerism and other good works. Alongside middle and older adults having better mental health as well when they know their family stories.
Communication is a huge part of the study, with another paper analyzing how strong communication between each generation on sensitive subjects such as sexual and reproductive health can have large mental well-being benefits for younger generations due to having an open and understanding form of communication.
Crandall has been studying families and public health for years as a doctor in her field. She noticed that families, and how they directly impact public health, had been largely ignored in research. That inspired her to take a deeper look at the topic and see if she could help the public health world understand how families and health are interwoven.
“We’ve been interested in families and how families influence health. And the health of the family. It’s a newer area of literature in public health, and it’s very hard to collect data on multiple generations. We saw the gap in the literature and said we need to address this,” Crandall said.
This incredible research has also moved forward significantly thanks to students playing a large role in the project. Students have been instrumental, with some even being first authors on papers and helping lead research and collect data as they take their first steps into the research field.
“They’ve been really impressive. They did all the recruiting for this study. This requires a lot of student time. So really it’s me kind of directing and teaching them how to do research,” Crandall explained.
Crandall’s research has taken an incredibly detailed look at health over generations and how it impacts individuals in families. With this quantitative research, Crandall and her collaborators hope their work will pave the way for others to follow their lead, looking into how health is passed down generationally and taking a closer look at the topic.
“I hope there are more studies looking at the health of families and how families influence individuals,” Crandall said. “We know it, but we don’t always know it all scientifically, as it has not been studied. So sometimes you need these studies to get other people looking at it.”
Crandall hopes that with the research she and her students have done, there will be a large increase in attention toward how generational health is connected and the efforts we can take to make people more aware.
Crandall closed with, “It’s all connected together. So we’re just trying to take the research and translate it in ways people can understand it.”
Crandall and her team’s incredible research is a first step of many to move the needle on the understanding of generational health. Dr. Crandall stands as a shining example of what groundbreaking research is being done and continues to be pursued in the public health field.