Kathleen Cagney was named the Director of the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research effective September 1, 2021.  Professor Cagney's work examines social inequality and its relationship to health with a focus on neighborhood, race, and aging, and the life course.  She has developed a series of papers on neighborhood social capital and its relationship to outcomes such as self-rated health, asthma prevalence, physical activity, and mortality during the 1995 Chicago heatwave.  She also focuses on the validity of such measures and the development of new neighborhood-based metrics that reflect the perceptions and experiences of older residents.  She holds research professorships in ISR's Survey Research Center and Population Studies Center.