Adverse policing as a social exposome pathway: Implications for depression, cognition, and dementia risk

The social exposome is increasingly recognized as a key determinant for cognitive health. Adverse policing represents an understudied aspect of the social exposome, reflecting persistent encounters with punitive surveillance and law enforcement that accumulate as chronic structural stressors across the life span.

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (2006-2020), we performed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to examine the dimensional overlap between depressive symptoms and cognitive performance among older Black adults aged 65 + (n = 265; mean age = 69; 72% women), stratified by adverse policing exposures.

Depressive and cognitive items generally formed separate dimensions, with effort-related depressive items and cognitive performance items frequently co-loading, suggesting an intermediate latent factor linked to psychosocial burden.

Our findings underscore the importance of integrating social exposome exposures, such as adverse policing, into modelling dementia risk. This will help researchers better characterize how social adversity impacts cognitive health.