Eileen Crimmins

Impact

Eileen Crimmins is a demographer whose work on changes over time in health and mortality underpins much of the population-level evidence on how people age. At the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology she is University Professor and holds the AARP Chair in Gerontology. She has been instrumental in integrating biological indicators into large population surveys, which lets researchers link biomarkers of physiological ageing to social and economic conditions in representative samples. She co-directs the USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health, one of the NIA-supported Demography of Aging Centers, and the NIA-sponsored Network on Biological Risk. She co-chaired a National Academy of Sciences committee on why US life expectancy lags other high-income countries, and has co-edited books on health expectancy, longevity and international mortality differences. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and has received the Gerontological Society of America's Kleemeier Award and the Population Association of America's Irene B. Taeuber Award. Her 2026 publications include work on blood biomarkers of neuropathology, socioeconomic status and cognition.

Metrics

• h-index 112 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗

Research output

533 works · 31,244 citations · h-index 91 OpenAlex ↗

Selected publications

• Assessment of Cognition Using Surveys and Neuropsychological Assessment: The Health and Retirement Study and the Aging, Demographics, and Memory Study ↗ 2011 · 1,086 citations
• Low Protein Intake Is Associated with a Major Reduction in IGF-1, Cancer, and Overall Mortality in the 65 and Younger but Not Older Population ↗ 2014 · 930 citations
• A Comparison of the Prevalence of Dementia in the United States in 2000 and 2012 ↗ 2016 · 919 citations
• Lifespan and Healthspan: Past, Present, and Promise ↗ 2015 · 780 citations
• A new aging measure captures morbidity and mortality risk across diverse subpopulations from NHANES IV: A cohort study ↗ 2018 · 765 citations

Research funding

37 NIH awards · USD 18M total NIH RePORTER ↗

• Geroscience of sex differences SCORE (GERO SCORE) National Institute on Aging · 2026 · USD 1M
• USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health National Institute on Aging · 2026 · USD 818K
• USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health National Institute on Aging · 2025 · USD 811K
• USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health National Institute on Aging · 2024 · USD 778K
• USC/UCLA Center on Biodemography and Population Health National Institute on Aging · 2023 · USD 777K

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