Early Life Adversity, Cumulative Life Stress, Race, and Cellular Aging in Midlife Women and Offspring
Description: PROJECT NARRATIVE Growing black/white disparities in health across generations has reached a critical juncture, and these differences may be due in part to greater stress exposures, which in turn may accelerate cellular aging processes. This study examines how different types of stress through the lifespan—such as traumatic events and chronic situations, perceptions of stress, and neighborhood deprivation-- might accelerate aging processes (as indexed by telomere length, epigenetic age, and inflammation) in a longitudinal cohort of biracial girls followed from age 10 and now 39, and whether their stress exposures also predict their offpsrings’ biological aging. A better understanding of the types of stress that impact health and intergenerational transmission of risk, as well as the potentially protective effects of psychological resiliency factors such as social support, will help inform the design of policies and programs that reduce racial and socioeconomic disparities in premature aging and disease.
Funder: National Institute on Aging
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: R01
Start date: 2019-09-15
End date: 2024-04-30
Investigator: ELISSA S. EPEL
Institution: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
Funded outputs count: 23
Funder award ID: R01AG059677
OpenAlex ID: G1478200097