Doctoral Dissertation Research: Biological normalcy, social stigma, and allostatic load in US adolescents

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This doctoral dissertation project will use comparative and biocultural approaches to better understand how body phenotypes are understood in the US cultural context, and how these cultural understandings may contribute to biological disparities among adolescents. The investigators will measure allostatic load (a measure of low-level chronic stress) in two groups of adolescents to assess biological impacts of psychosocial stress from perceived weight stigma in various epidemiological contexts. The work will address complex relationships among phenotypic norms, social stigma, and co-morbidities of obesity in a vulnerable section of the US population, at a time when there is a high prevalence of obesity, perceived weight stigma, and weight discrimination. Research findings will be shared with study participants as well as curriculum specialists to develop new learning modules. The project supports graduate training for a female, first-generation college student. This research employs a mixed-methods, sequential explanatory strategy, using questionnaires, biomarkers, and ethnographic interviews to compare two populations varying in prevalence of obesity: Lawrence County, Indiana (38%) and Monroe County, Indiana (22%). The project is framed around the concept of biological normalcy, which refers to the ways in which human societies develop understandings of what a "normal" human body is - normal referring to normative ideas about what bodies "should" be as well as statistical distributions of different phenotypic traits. The researchers use this concept to address: 1) how cultural beliefs about what constitutes a "normal" or healthy body are related to statistical biological norms (i.e. obesity prevalence) within a population, and 2) how these normative beliefs influence the statistical distribution of biological traits (i.e. allostatic load) in a population. It is hypothesized that variation in obesity prevalence observed between the two field sites in Indiana will be associated with differences in perceived weight stigma, with those reporting higher perceived stigma also having higher allostatic load, and that this relationship will be moderated by several social and behavioral factors and coping strategies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.