He was Kenan Distinguished Professor of maternal and child health in the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)
Gillings School of Global Public Health and professor of sociology in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences. He joined the faculty at UNC from 1965, and remained there for the rest of his career. He is known for designing the
National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (originally known as the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health), which he also secured funding for and directed from 1994 to 2004. The study was cited, for example, in a 2009
MSNBC article about claims that the United States' birth rate had increased nine months after the
2008 United States presidential election. ==References==