John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health

Affiliate Members,
Consultants and Collaborators

Affiliate Members

• Burton Singer, Ph.D. Dr. Singer is an epidemiologist/social scientist who studies the interrelationships between psychosocial experiences, their physiological substrates, and well-being-both positive and negative. He is also interested in exploring the mechanisms, at multiple levels, that could account for the empirical associations between the degree of income inequality in defined populations and health status. He, along with Carol Ryff, has been leading the work with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.
• Shelley Taylor, Ph.D. Dr. Taylor studies the interaction of biology and behavior across the lifespan as they affect mental and physical health. Her current research examines several topics relevant to this general theme. One line of work explores gender differences in biobehavioral responses to stress and their implications for health outcomes. In particular, the focus of this work is a pattern of responding to stress termed "tend-and-befriend," which maintains that responses to stress in females have evolved for the protection of offspring and affiliation with social groups, especially networks of females. A second program of work examines the relation of parenting behavior to health and mental health outcomes in offspring. In particular, the work focuses on "risky families," namely families characterized by abusive, cold and harsh, or neglectful parenting, and its relation to both childhood and adult mental and physical health disorders. Biological mechanisms for these long-term effects of early childhood experiences are proposed.
• Norman Anderson, Ph.D. Dr. Anderson is the former head of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences at NIH, currently CEO at the American Psychological Association. He is interested in a broad range of factors that contribute to the SES-health association, particularly the role played by ethnicity. He has been a consultant to the network since its inception.

Research Consultants and Collaborators

• Arun Karlamangla, M.D. Dr. Karlamangla is a clinical instructor in the Division of Geriatrics of the School of Medicine at UCLA. He is working closely with Teresa Seeman on analyses related to allostatic load and health outcomes in a number of the comprehensive samples (e.g., CARDIA, MacArthur Successful Aging).
• Kiang Liu, Ph.D. Dr. Liu is the Principal Investigator at the CARDIA Chicago site, and works closely with the Network on the CARDIA/MacArthur Allostatic Load ancillary study.
• Rena Repetti, Ph.D. Dr. Repetti is a professor of psychology at UCLA, is an expert in family stress processes and in stress and coping more generally. She has been heavily involved in the risky families work, especially the development of the conceptual model. She also worked with Shelley Taylor and Teresa Seeman on the Annual Review paper, "What is an Unhealthy Environment and How does it Get Under the Skin?"
• Martin Shipley, Ph.D.Dr. Shipley is a Senior Lecturer in Medical Statistics in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London. He is working with Michael Marmot on analyses of network projects in Whitehall II.
• Carol Shively, Ph.D. Dr. Shively is an expert in social hierarchies in primates. She has participated in allostatic load meetings, and is currently leading a project funded in part by the network to look at the effects of unstable social hierarchies on mood and health outcomes in macaque monkeys.
• Steve Sidney, M.D., MPH. Dr. Sidney is the Principal Investigator at the CARDIA Oakland site, and works closely with the Network on the CARDIA/MacArthur Allostatic Load ancillary study.
• Archana Singh-Manoux, Ph.D. Dr. Singh-Manoux is a Research Psychologist in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London, who is working with Michael Marmot on Whitehall II, with particular interest in subjective social status.
• Richard Sloan, Ph.D. Dr. Sloan is Chief of the Behavioral Medicine Department at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. He is an expert in heart rate variability measurement, and is consulting on CARDIA.
• Carol Somkin, Ph.D. Dr. Somkin is a sociologist at the Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Foundation. She is a collaborator with Nancy Adler on the Oakland Neighborhood Study.
• Eve Van Cauter, Ph.D. Dr. Van Cauter is an expert in sleep research. She has attended allostatic load and cortisol meetings, and led a project funded in part by the network to look at SES, sleep quality/quantity and diabetes.

Network Associates

An important role of the network is the mentoring of young researchers. Our network associates have worked closely with network members during their training and continue collaboration with us.

• Sarah Burgard, Ph.D. Dr. Burgard is an assistant professor of Sociology and assistant research scientist at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. She currently is studying socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender-based disparities in working conditions and the relationships between occupational careers and health.
• Edith Chen, Ph.D. Dr. Chen is co-director of the Psychobiology of Health Laboratory at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on psychosocial pathways that may explain relationships between low socioeconomic status and cardiovascular risk factors in healthy teens as well as immune and neuroendocrine markers in adolescents with asthma.
• Elissa Epel, Ph.D. Dr. Epel is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. Her research bridges health psychology and neuroendocrinology. Based on cognitive theories of stress, she is examining cognitive and affective predictors of catabolic and anabolic responses to chronic and acute stress, by examining stress hormone responses to laboratory stimuli and in the naturalistic environment.
• Lia Fernald, Ph.D. Dr. Fernald is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health at University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include psychosocial and biological determinants of health; obesity, overweight, and nutritional and epidemiologic transition; malnutrition, international child health and development; immigrant health, inequalities and health disparities; and early experience, stress hormones, salivary cortisol.
• Linda Gallo, Ph.D. Dr. Gallo is an associate professor of Psychology at San Diego State University. Her research interests encompass socioeconomic and ethnic disparities in physical and mental health; psychosocial factors and health outcomes in patient populations; psychosocial factors and interpersonal experiences in cardiovascular stress responses; and gender and women’s health.
• Elizabeth Goodman, M.D. Dr. Goodman is an adjunct professor at Tufts-New England Medical Center. Her research interests include the public health impact of socioeconomic status on adolescent depression and obesity, and behavioral interventions for overweight adolescents to prevent heart disease and diabetes.
• Tara Gruenewald, Ph.D. Dr. Gruenewald is assistant professor in-residence in  Geriatric Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests include psychological and social factors that impact functioning and health outcomes in older adults, including the biological pathways through which psychosocial variables influence health.
• Denise Janicki-Deverts, Ph.D. Dr. Janicki-Deverts is a postdoctoral fellow in Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. Using CARDIA data she is examining the association of unemployment and social relationships to inflammation, the association of lifecourse SES with oxidative stress, and associations of SES trajectories with inflammation and with health behaviors. Using data from a large industrial company she is examining the association of work stress and of job grade to pulmonary function. 
• Gregory Miller, Ph.D. Dr. Miller is co-director of the Psychobiological Determinants of Health Laboratory at the University of British Columbia. His research examines the behavioral and biological mechanisms through which thoughts and feelings “get inside the body” to influence disease processes, including how children's socioeconomic environments influence their long-term risk for disease, and what role epigenetic programming might play in this process.
• Deborah Polk, Ph.D. Dr. Polk assistant professor at theUniversity of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine. Her research examines how psychological factors “get inside” the body and affect physical health. Areas of particular focus are the roles of socioeconomic status, psychosocial stress, and social relationships in oral health outcomes such as periodontal disease, and on inflammatory pathways and their regulators, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

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