Kubzansky Research Group
Dr. Laura Kubzansky is professor of social and behavioral sciences and director of the Society and Health Laboratory at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a sitting faculty member at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and served as a founding director of both the JPB Environmental Health Fellowship Program and the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at Harvard Chan School.
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Childhood Experiences and Health Across the Life Course
Much of the research on psychosocial factors in health has been conducted in samples of middle-aged adults or older. Although emotions (and other psychological experiences) are ongoing and dynamic processes, most studies capture emotion at a relatively arbitrary point in time during adulthood. Studies of mid-life adults miss a myriad of processes already set in motion earlier. I have developed a program of research using a life-course developmental perspective aimed at clarifying how and why social and emotional experiences influence later health, thereby providing a conceptual framework for addressing questions about duration or timing (e.g., sensitive periods) of exposure and reversibility of effects. My research in this area demonstrates that risk of poor emotional or physical health in adulthood can be detected relatively early in childhood and adolescence.
Sample Publications:
- Slopen N, Koenen KC, Kubzansky LD. Cumulative adversity in childhood and emergent risk factors for long-term health: A prospective examination of timing and chronicity. Journal of Pediatrics, 2014; 164(3):631-638. PMCID N/A.
- Boehm JK, Qureshi F, Kubzansky LD. Psychological well-being in childhood and cardiometabolic risk in middle adulthood: Findings from the 1958 British Birth Cohort. Psychological Science, 2022; 33(8):1199-1211. PMCID: PMC9807774.