The Effect of Mexican Anti-Poverty Program on Stress

描述(由申请人提供)： 本申请寻求为国际科学研究发展奖(IRSDA)提供资金，重点是加州大学伯克利分校和墨西哥库埃纳瓦卡的墨西哥国家公共卫生研究所(INSP)的经济学、人口学以及人类发展的社会和生物学方面。候选人Lia C.Fernald目前是加州大学伯克利分校商业和经济研究所的博士后，之前获得了临床医学博士学位和医疗保健管理MBA学位。IRSDA将允许候选人有一段时间的指导性研究，为她在国际公共卫生领域追求成功的独立研究生涯做好准备。 候选人S的长期目标是利用高质量的评估和研究作为工具，开发有效和可持续的项目，促进发展中国家积极的社会变革。她的目标是建立一个技能和知识基础，这些技能和知识对于开展大规模、以社区为基础的扶贫项目的研究和干预至关重要。她的目标是：1)获得经济学和人口学理论和方法方面的专业知识；2)获得用于分析多层次、复杂、纵向的公共卫生和经济数据的高级量化方法方面的专业知识；3)了解与社会经济状况(SES)相关的健康心理学和人类发展；4)将人口统计学和计量经济学模型以及人类发展方面的知识应用于制定社会经济指标和分析健康结果。她计划通过直接的课程作业、一对一的教程和有指导的研究项目相结合来实现这些目标。 主要基于动物的研究，一些研究人员怀疑，应激敏感的生理系统的活动可能在SES与健康和行为结果之间的联系中起中介作用。尽管研究人员开始研究生理应激反应和SES之间的同步关系，但还没有对人类的研究能够直接解决因果关系的问题。费尔纳德博士将提出一个关键问题，即社会经济地位的改善是否会影响应激生理学的基础和调节方面的变化。她将利用墨西哥一项大型、随机、对照的减贫试验(Progresa计划)来调查扶贫计划对儿童生理压力活动的影响。她还将使用实验模型来开始确定调节Progresa对应激反应的影响的因素。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application seeks funding for an International Scientific Research Development Award (IRSDA), with the focus on economics, demography, and the social and biological aspects of human development at the University of California at Berkeley and the Mexican National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico. The candidate, Lia C. Fernald, is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Institute for Business and Economic Research at UC Berkeley, and previously received a Ph.D. in Clinical Medicine and an M.B.A. with a focus on Health Care Management. The IRSDA will allow the candidate to have a period of mentored research that will prepare her to pursue a successful independent research career in international public health. The candidate' s long-term goal is to use high quality evaluation and research as a tool to develop effective and sustainable programs that promote positive social change in developing countries. She aims to develop a base of skills and knowledge that are critical to conducting research and interventions in large scale, community-based, poverty- alleviation programs. Her goals are I) to gain expertise in the theory and methodology of economics and demography; 2) to gain expertise in advanced quantitative methods for analyzing multi-level, complex, longitudinal public health and economic data; 3) to develop an understanding of health psychology and human development in relation to socioeconomic status (SES); and 4) to apply this knowledge of demographic and econometric models, and human development to the development of socio-economic metrics and analysis of health outcomes. She plans to achieve these goals through a combination of direct coursework, one-on-one tutorials, and a mentored research project. Based primarily on animal work, some researchers suspect that activity of stress-sensitive physiological systems may mediate associations between SES and both health and behavioral outcomes. Although investigators are beginning to examine concurrent relations between physiological stress responsivity and SES, no studies with humans have been able to directly address the issue of causality directly. Dr. Fernald will ask the critical question whether an improvement in socio-economic status can effect change in basal and regulatory aspects of stress physiology. She will take advantage of a large, randomized, controlled-trial of poverty reduction in Mexico (the PROGRESA program) to investigate the impact of a poverty-alleviation program on activity of physiological stress in children. She will also use the experimental model to begin to identify factors mediating the impact of PROGRESA on stress reactivity.