Identity influences on psychosocial traits, biologic age, and cardiovascular disease disparities

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Cardiovascular disease (CVD) disparities are increasingly attributed to the distinct social conditions in which various social groups age. Socioeconomic and psychosocial factors are known to cause chronic stress that may increase risk of CVD, but the mechanisms are not fully clear. It is therefore important to identify factors that mediate or moderate the effects of social stressors on CVD. Geroscientific theory reconceptualizes chronic disease as a product of sustained dysfunctional aging, offering additional avenues for understanding how the social environment is internalized to influence health. Work emerging from this literature has identified epigenetic dimensions of aging such as DNA methylation which appear particularly responsive to psychosocial stressors. Epigenetic “clocks”, or measures of DNA methylation-based predictors of chronological age, health, and mortality may serve as useful markers that can provide important missing information on the relationships between social stressors, aging, and CVD. Furthermore, psychological factors may also play an integral role in these pathways. Self-concept is a determinant of a number of identity-based psychosocial characteristics associated with both epigenetic changes and CVD. These include dispositional traits such as optimism and negative affect, as well as beliefs about self-worth and subjective social status. Importantly, these factors are also known to influence the way individuals perceive and cope with stress. Antecedent to the psychosocial traits which influence stressor appraisal and stress-responsive behavior, self-concept may therefore serve as a viable point of intervening on the subjective identity characteristics which catalyze premature and dysfunctional aging in the context of social disadvantage and predispose individuals to CVD. Incorporating a geroscientific perspective, the applicant’s Identity Vitality-Pathology (IVP) model theorizes that certain self-concepts render individuals particularly vulnerable or resilient to the health effects of social stressors by promoting or preventing premature aging. The proposed IVP scale (IVPS) aims to measure these novel identity characteristics hypothesized to predict aging-related psychosocial factors and cardiovascular health. The specific objectives of the proposed study are to: 1) examine whether psychosocial risk and resilience factors predict biological age as measured by epigenetic clocks using data combined from the Jackson Heart Study and the Atherosclerosis Risk In Communities cohorts; and 2) use preliminary qualitative data to develop and finalize items for use in the IVPS. R00 phase aims include examining the psychometric properties of the IVPS and assessing whether self-concept as measured by the IVPS predicts CVD-related psychosocial traits and biological aging. Ultimately, this work has the potential to identify additional targets for addressing racial and gender disparities in healthy aging and CVD, particularly ways of favorably influencing epigenetic changes associated with healthy aging.