We provide open access to Life + Health documentation, study instruments, and code used to construct the analytic dataset to promote transparency and reproducibility. These materials are available via Harvard Dataverse and our GitHub organization, which cross‑reference one another.

• Harvard Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QNJV0A
• GitHub: https://github.com/LifeAndHealthStudy

De‑identified, standardized Life + Health data for all 699 participants—drawn from three Boston community health centers and described in the public data dictionary—are available only through a structured review process.

• Life + Health Data Access Application

Unless otherwise specified on this page, review meetings are typically held on the first Wednesday of February, May, August, and November.

For questions about Life + Health data access or this process, please contact: krieger_group_data_sharing@hsph.harvard.edu.

• A video excerpt of our invited Life + Health presentation from the NIH NIMHD Workshop on Addressing the Influence of Interpersonal Biases Workshop (Day 2) is available here; if interested in the full‑day recording, see here for the full NIH NIMHD Workshop on Addressing the Influence of Interpersonal Biases Day 2 recording.

• Marini, M., Waterman, P. D., Breedlove, E., Chen, J. T., Testa, C., Reisner, S. L., Pardee, D. J., Mayer, K. H., & Krieger, N. (2021). The target/perpetrator brief‑implicit association test (B‑IAT): An implicit instrument for efficiently measuring discrimination based on race/ethnicity, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, weight, and age. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 158. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-10171-7
• Krieger, N., LeBlanc, M., Waterman, P. D., Reisner, S. L., Testa, C., & Chen, J. T. (2023). Decreasing Survey Response Rates in the Time of COVID‑19: Implications for Analyses of Population Health and Health Inequities. American Journal of Public Health, 113(6), 667–670. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307267
• LeBlanc, M. E., Testa, C., Waterman, P. D., Reisner, S. L., Chen, J. T., Breedlove, E. R., Mbaye, F., Nwamah, A., Mayer, K. H., Oendari, A., & Krieger, N. (2023). Contextualizing Response Rates During the COVID‑19 Pandemic: Experiences From a Boston‑Based Community Health Centers Study. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 29(6), 882–891. https://doi.org/10.1097/PHH.0000000000001785
• Marini, M., Waterman, P. D., Breedlove, E. R., Chen, J. T., Testa, C., Pardee, D. J., LeBlanc, M., Reisner, S. L., Oendari, A., & Krieger, N. (2023). Using Implicit Measures of Discrimination: White, Black, and Hispanic Participants Respond Differently to Group‑Specific Racial/Ethnic Categories vs. the General Category “People of Color” in the USA. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 10(4), 1682–1692. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-022-01353-z
• Reisner, S. L., Johnson, N., Chen, J. T., Marini, M., LeBlanc, M. E., Mayer, K. H., Oendari, A., Bright, D. M., Callender, S., Valdez, G., Khan, T., & Krieger, N. (2025). Analyzing multiple types of discrimination using implicit and explicit measures, comparing target vs. dominant groups, in a study of smoking/vaping among community health center members in Boston, Massachusetts (2020–2022). International Journal for Equity in Health, 24(1), 110. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-025-02456-9
• Zubizarreta, D., Reisner, S. L., Chen, J. T., LeBlanc, M. E., Johnson, N. R., & Krieger, N. (2025). Context matters: Validity and reliability of a sociopolitical concerns measure for use in population health research on discrimination and health. Annals of Epidemiology, 107, 24–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2025.05.008

• MBMS epigenetic analytic dataset documentation and construction code
  • Harvard Dataverse dataset “DNA methylation & adversity: My Body My Story (MBMS) epigenetic analytic dataset (R01MD014304, 2019–2026)” (data dictionary, instruments, access/terms‑of‑use PDF)
  • Companion GitHub repository with R scripts (Create‑Analytic‑MBMS‑Dataset) to construct the de‑identified analytic dataset described there.
• Shared analysis functions and study‑variable construction code
  • The DNAmAndAdversity_public R package and companion analysis code (GitHub, archived at Zenodo), originally developed for our epigenetic‑aging analyses and generalized for broader use.
• Scripts to construct epigenetic clocks from raw DNA methylation data
  • GitHub repository (epigenetic_clocks_mbms_mesa) for creating multiple epigenetic clocks from Illumina 450K/EPIC data for MBMS, MESA, and similar datasets.
• Code for the epigenome‑wide analyses (EWAS) of DNAm, racialized and economic inequities, and air pollution
  • GitHub repository (EWAS_of_social_inequities).
    
• Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) metrics and related contextual measures
  • GitHub repository (CensusData) providing census‑tract–level ICE metrics for racial composition, income distribution, and housing tenure for MBMS and MESA, derived from U.S. Census and American Community Survey data.
    
• State Policy Liberalism Index data used in this project
  • Dataset authored by Caughey & Warshaw and distributed via Harvard Dataverse.
    
• EWAS summary statistics from this project
  • Made available in the EWAS Catalog upon publication of the relevant analyses.
    

Note: None of these resources contain individual‑level MBMS or MESA data; they provide code, documentation, and contextual measures to support transparent, reproducible research.

De‑identified, standardized MBMS epigenetic analytic data for 293 participants—patients of four Boston community health centers and documented in the public data dictionary and study materials—are available only through a structured governed review process.

• MBMS DNA Methylation Project Data Access Application

Unless otherwise specified on this page, review meetings are typically held on the second Wednesday of February, May, August, and November.

For questions about MBMS epigenetic data access or this process, please contact: krieger_group_data_sharing@hsph.harvard.edu

Note: The DNA methylation & adversity project also uses individual‑level data from the Multi‑Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Access to MESA data must be requested directly from the MESA study via their own application process; the MBMS governance process cannot grant or broker access to MESA data.

• Watkins, Sarah Holmes, Karen Ho, Christian Testa, Louise Falk, Patrice Soule, Linda V. Nguyen, Sophie FitzGibbon, Catherine Slack, Jarvis T. Chen, George Davey Smith, Immaculata De Vivo, Andrew J. Simpkin, Kate Tilling, Pamela D. Waterman, Nancy Krieger, Matthew Suderman, and Caroline Relton. 2022. “The Impact of Low Input DNA on the Reliability of DNA Methylation as Measured by the Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC BeadChip.” Epigenetics 17(13):2366–76. doi:10.1080/15592294.2022.2123898. PMCID: PMC9665153.
• Krieger, Nancy, Jarvis T. Chen, Christian Testa, Ana Diez Roux, Kate Tilling, Sarah Watkins, Andrew J. Simpkin, Matthew Suderman, George Davey Smith, Immaculata De Vivo, Pamela D. Waterman, and Caroline Relton. 2023. “Use of Correct and Incorrect Methods of Accounting for Age in Studies of Epigenetic Accelerated Aging: Implications and Recommendations for Best Practices.” American Journal of Epidemiology 192(5):800–811. doi:10.1093/aje/kwad025. PMCID: PMC10160768.
• Watkins, Sarah Holmes, Christian Testa, Jarvis T. Chen, Immaculata De Vivo, Andrew J. Simpkin, Kate Tilling, Ana V. Diez Roux, George Davey Smith, Pamela D. Waterman, Matthew Suderman, Caroline Relton, and Nancy Krieger. 2023. “Epigenetic Clocks and Research Implications of the Lack of Data on Whom They Have Been Developed: A Review of Reported and Missing Sociodemographic Characteristics.” Environmental Epigenetics 9(1):dvad005. doi:10.1093/eep/dvad005. PMCID: PMC10411856.
• Krieger, Nancy, Christian Testa, Jarvis T. Chen, Nykesha Johnson, Sarah H. Watkins, Matthew Suderman, Andrew J. Simpkin, Kate Tilling, Pamela D. Waterman, Brent A. Coull, Immaculata De Vivo, George Davey Smith, Ana V. Diez Roux, and Caroline Relton. 2023. “Epigenetic Aging & Embodying Injustice: US My Body My Story and Multi-Ethnic Atherosclerosis Study.” medRxiv: The Preprint Server for Health Sciences 2023.12.13.23299930. doi:10.1101/2023.12.13.23299930. PMCID: PMC10760288.
• Krieger, Nancy, Christian Testa, Jarvis T. Chen, Nykesha Johnson, Sarah Holmes Watkins, Matthew Suderman, Andrew J. Simpkin, Kate Tilling, Pamela D. Waterman, Brent A. Coull, Immaculata De Vivo, George Davey Smith, Ana V. Diez Roux, and Caroline Relton. 2024. “Epigenetic Aging and Racialized, Economic, and Environmental Injustice: NIMHD Social Epigenomics Program.” JAMA Network Open 7(7):e2421832. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.21832. PMCID: PMC11287398.
• Watkins, Sarah Holmes, Christian Testa, Andrew J. Simpkin, George Davey Smith, Brent Coull, Immaculata De Vivo, Kate Tilling, Pamela D. Waterman, Jarvis T. Chen, Ana V. Diez-Roux, Nancy Krieger, Matthew Suderman, and Caroline Relton. 2025. “An Epigenome-Wide Analysis of DNA Methylation, Racialized and Economic Inequities, and Air Pollution.” Clinical Epigenetics 18(1):4. doi:10.1186/s13148-025-01929-6. PMCID: PMC12764144.