Cagney’s work examines social inequality and its relationship to health with a focus on neighborhood, race, aging, and the life course. She has developed a series of papers on neighborhood social capital and its relationship to outcomes such as self-rated health, asthma prevalence, physical activity, and mortality during the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Currently she works on two Chicago-based studies of neighborhood context and older adult health, examines the role of the social and physical environment in older adult well-being with the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, and has started research on the social impact of the upcoming Chicago Lakeside Development, a 600-acre, entirely new neighborhood that will be built on Chicago’s South Side.