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多种多样。仍然存在的主要科学挑战之一是了解这些因素如何随时间变化。这个项目以移民社区为例，他们在美国表现出独特而有些矛盾的健康轨迹。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，反映出在美国出生的人群中发现的健康差异模式。通常，理论认为这是文化适应和其他环境因素的产物。在研究不同的心理压力时，这个项目训练学生用经验、科学数据收集和分析的方法，询问是否可能有一个生物学的维度，通过评估母亲压力对婴儿压力反应发展的影响来衡量。大量的研究表明，早期的情绪环境对婴儿的发育有重要的影响。在评估母亲的压力感受如何导致婴儿压力反应的改变的过程中，研究结果将被传播给那些寻求改善母亲压力的组织，这些压力可以对下一代的功能和福祉产生影响。该项目将提供有关移民母亲可能需要的资源或计划类型的信息，以减轻全国各地小社区的压力。Elizabeth Holdsworth在纽约州立大学奥尔巴尼分校的Lawrence Schell博士的指导下，将探讨在移民妇女中造成生理压力，特别是异文化压力的因素，当地生态环境如何体现在压力经历中，以及母亲的压力在多大程度上是跨代传递的，影响婴儿压力反应的发展。该项目将采访在过去五年内移居美国的居住在纽约州首都地区的有婴儿的移民母亲。移民母亲将完成关于感知压力、异文化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他们最大的挑战和斗争的信息。这些反应将与母亲头发中的皮质醇量有关，这是过去三个月慢性应激反应激活的一种衡量标准，以确定哪些压力源导致移民母亲最大的慢性身体压力。还将收集移民母亲的婴儿在注射疫苗前后的唾液样本，以评估皮质醇产生的变化，皮质醇是应激反应的一种衡量标准。婴儿的压力反应程度也将与母亲的压力报告相关联，以确定哪些因素对婴儿的压力反应发展影响最大。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或获得哪些资源，这些资源可以改善或加剧压力。该项目将有助于在生物文化人类学和其他领域就不同文化和其他形式的压力的共同出现、社会心理压力对健康差距的影响、当地生态对压力暴露的影响以及产后产妇压力与婴儿压力反应之间的关系进行辩论。

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.