Compare methods

	Life-Course Epidemiology	Chains-of-Risk Model
Field	Social Epidemiology	Social Epidemiology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2002	2003
Originator	Yoav Ben-Shlomo & Diana Kuh	Diana Kuh & Yoav Ben-Shlomo (life-course glossary and conceptual models)
Type	Conceptual and analytic framework for long-term exposure-disease modeling	Sequential-mediation model of linked life-course exposures
Seminal source	Ben-Shlomo, Y., & Kuh, D. (2002). A life course approach to chronic disease epidemiology: conceptual models, empirical challenges and interdisciplinary perspectives. International Journal of Epidemiology, 31(2), 285-293.	Kuh, D., Ben-Shlomo, Y., Lynch, J., Hallqvist, J., & Power, C. (2003). Life course epidemiology. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 57(10), 778-783.
Aliases	Life Course Approach to Chronic Disease, Life-Course Framework, Developmental Origins Epidemiology, Biological and Social Programming Approach	Chain of Risk Model, Accumulation of Risk Model, Risk Chains, Additive vs Trigger Chains
Related	3	3
Summary	Life-course epidemiology is the study of how physical and social exposures across gestation, childhood, adolescence, and adult life shape later health and disease risk. Codified by Yoav Ben-Shlomo and Diana Kuh in their 2002 International Journal of Epidemiology paper and the 2003 glossary by Kuh, Ben-Shlomo, Lynch, Hallqvist, and Power, the framework supplies a set of competing conceptual models that specify how the timing and sequence of exposures matter. Rather than asking only what causes disease, it asks when exposures act and how their effects compound. Its three signature models — critical or sensitive periods, accumulation of risk, and chains of risk — give researchers a disciplined way to translate developmental and social theory into testable longitudinal hypotheses about the origins of adult chronic disease.	The chains-of-risk model is the specific life-course mechanism in which adverse exposures are linked in a sequence over time, so that one exposure raises the probability of the next, and the cumulative or final link bears on disease. Set out in Ben-Shlomo and Kuh's 2002 conceptual paper and defined in the Kuh, Ben-Shlomo, Lynch, Hallqvist, and Power 2003 life-course glossary, it models how early disadvantage can cascade — poor early circumstances leading to limited education, then to hazardous work or health behaviors, and finally to disease. Its signature analytic distinction is between an additive chain, in which each link independently adds to risk, and a trigger chain, in which the early links matter only because they lead to a final exposure that is the true cause. Chains-of-risk modeling thus treats the life course as a causal pathway to be decomposed, not a list of independent risk factors.