Research Interests
My work focuses on advancing knowledge and advocacy efforts around the relevance of childhood social context for later health outcomes and the intergenerational transmission of health, including morbidity and mortality related to stress physiology (including allostatic load), perceptions of physical and emotional weathering, and health-related behaviors. A main area of interest is in understanding the development of youth future orientation, and relationships between future orientation and actual trajectories of health. I am also interested in understanding relationships between sociocultural context and the intergenerational transmission of health, including cardiometabolic outcomes such as the transition from prediabetes to diabetes and the development of hypertension. I am an MPI on two studies funded by NIH-NIA, focused on understanding generational patterns of health behaviors, disease onset (including cognitive decline), and risk and resilience factors impacting population health.