The National Institute on Aging funds mid-life studies, including research on pregnancy, to understand how social and economic disparities, race, sex, and stress shape telomere length at birth.

“National Institute of Aging which mostly studies old people, they have started to fund...they started to say okay, mid-life determines older health. So now they fund studies of mid-life. And they even funded us and our colleagues to look at pregnancy now, to see telomere length, how it's transmitted and affected at birth from social and economic disparities, race, sex, stress, how all of those shape telomere length at birth. Because they believe it is going to create a healthy trajectory of aging or not. And so that's where they're investing now.”