CENTER ON SOCIAL INEQUALITIES, MIND &BODY

OVERALL DESCRIPTION: The Michigan Interdisciplinary Center on Social Inequalities, Mind and Body will foster an interdisciplinary training program seeking to understand the interactions of psychological states, their determinants, stress and pathophysiologic markers of stress in the development of physical and mental disorders in child development and in aging. The center will focus on socioeconomic and racial inequalities in health, and on lifecourse and community determinants in population-based samples of children and adults, men and women, whites and minorities. The proposed projects will focus on: (1) the extent to which children's emotional, physical and cognitive status reflect the influence of parental socioeconomic status, income trajectories, economic stress and community characteristics, (2) the role of glucocorticoid and seratonergic mechanisms in the association between psychosocial states, SES and risk for CVD, (3) the interrelations between a broad array of psychological attributes and related biological markers of stress within a multilevel representative community sample, (4) a study of the contributions of socioeconomic, biological and psychosocial factors at different stages of the lifecourse to a broad range of indicators of psychological wellbeing, cardiovascular risk factor status and (5) the impact of chronic economic stress on health and function in a randomly selected cohort of poor women. The Center will also emphasize the development of new methodological and biostatistical tools, novel approaches to career development and will emphasize the dissemination of research findings to policy audiences. The Center will involve the collaboration of 22 senior researchers from nine disciplines.