Doctoral Dissertation Research: Biological and Cultural Influences on Infant Stress Response Development

研究表明，影响健康结果和差异的生物和文化因素有很多。仍然存在的主要科学挑战之一是了解这些因素如何随着时间的推移而变化。这个项目在移民社区中举了一个这样的例子，他们在美国展示了独特的、有些自相矛盾的健康轨迹。起初，他们的健康状况超出预期，但随着时间的推移，他们的健康状况有所下降，以反映在美国出生的人口中发现的健康差距模式。通常，这被认为是文化适应和其他环境因素的产物。在观察不同的心理压力时，这个项目训练学生使用经验、科学的数据收集和分析方法，询问是否有生物学方面的因素，可以通过评估母亲压力对婴儿压力反应发展的影响来衡量。大量研究表明，早期的情绪环境可能会对婴儿的发育产生重大影响。在评估母亲的压力感受如何导致婴儿压力反应的变化时，研究结果将传播给寻求改善母亲压力的组织，这些方式可能会对下一代的功能和福祉产生影响。该项目将提供移民母亲可能需要的资源或计划类型的信息，以缓解全国各地小社区的压力。伊丽莎白·霍兹沃斯在奥尔巴尼纽约州立大学的劳伦斯·谢尔博士的指导下，将探索哪些因素导致移民女性的生理压力，特别是文化压力，当地的生态环境如何体现在压力体验中，以及母亲压力跨代传递到什么程度，影响婴儿压力反应的发展。该项目将采访居住在纽约州首府地区的婴儿的移民母亲，他们在过去五年内移居美国。移民母亲将完成关于感知压力、文化适应压力和其他主题的问卷调查，并参加半结构化访谈，以提供更多关于移民母亲认为她们最重要的挑战和挣扎的信息。这些反应将与母亲头发中皮质醇的量相关联，皮质醇是过去三个月慢性压力反应激活的衡量标准，以确定哪些压力源导致移民母亲的慢性身体压力最大。还将在注射疫苗前后从移民母亲的婴儿身上采集唾液样本，以评估皮质醇产生的变化，皮质醇产生是一种衡量压力反应能力的指标。婴儿的压力反应程度也将与母亲对压力的报告相关联，以确定哪些因素对婴儿压力反应的发展影响最大。最后，该项目的调查人员将参与当地社区活动并观察项目，以确定该地区的移民母亲可以获得和获得哪些资源，这些资源可能会改善或加剧压力。该项目将有助于生物文化人类学和其他领域关于文化适应压力和其他形式的压力共存、心理社会压力对健康差异的影响、当地生态对压力暴露的影响以及产后母亲压力与婴儿应激反应之间的关系的辩论。

Research has established that there are a variety of biological and cultural factors that influence health outcomes and disparities. One of the major scientific challenges that remains is understanding how those factors change over time. This project takes up one such example in immigrant communities, who in the U.S. exhibit unique and somewhat paradoxical health trajectories. Initially their health profiles exceed expectations, but over time they decrease to mirror health disparity patterns found among U.S.-born populations. Typically, this has been theorized to be the product of acculturation and other environmental factors. In looking at differential psychological stress, this project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, asks whether there might be a biological dimension to this, measurable by assessing the influence of maternal stress on infants' stress response development. Considerable research shows that the early emotional environment can have a significant influence on how infants develop. In assessing how mothers' feelings of stress can lead to altered development of infants' stress responses, the findings will be disseminated to organizations that seek to improve mothers' stress in ways that can have repercussions on the function and wellbeing of the next generation. The project will provide information on the types of resources or programs immigrant mothers may need to ameliorate stress in small communities around the country.Elizabeth Holdsworth, under the supervision of Dr. Lawrence Schell of the State University of New York at Albany, will explore what factors contribute to physiological stress, particularly acculturative stress, among immigrant women, how the local ecological context is embodied in the experience of stress, and to what extent maternal stress is transmitted transgenerationally, influencing infant stress response development. This project will interview immigrant mothers of infants living in the Capital Region of New York State who moved to the U.S. within the past five years. Immigrant mothers will complete questionnaires about perceived stress, acculturative stress, and other topics, as well as participate in semi-structured interviews to provide more information on what immigrant mothers identify as their most significant challenges and struggles. These responses will be associated with amounts of cortisol in mothers' hair, a measure of chronic stress response activation over the past three months, to determine which stressors lead to the greatest chronic physical stress in immigrant mothers. Saliva samples will also be collected from immigrant mother's infants before and after an injected vaccination to assess the change in cortisol production, a measure of stress response reactivity. Infant stress response extent will also be associated with mothers' reports of stress to determine which factors have the greatest influence on infant stress response development. Lastly, the investigators of this project will participate in local community events and observe programs to determine what resources are available to and accessed by immigrant mothers in the area that could improve or exacerbate stress. The project will contribute to debates in biocultural anthropology and other fields about the co-occurrence of acculturative and other forms of stress, the influence of psychosocial stress on health disparities, the influence of local ecology on stress exposure, and the relationship between postnatal maternal stress on infant stress response.