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.
677 Huntington Avenue
Kresge Building, Room 603
Boston, MA 02115
Research Focal Areas
Dr. Kubzansky has published extensively on the role of psychological and social factors in health, with a focus on stress and positive psychological assets (including emotional well-being) in relation to cardiovascular disease. She also conducts research on whether stress, emotion, and other psychological factors are pathways underlying social disparities in health.
Other lines of research include: (a) biological mechanisms linking emotions, social relationships, and health; (b) relationships among early childhood environments, resilience, and healthy aging; (c) how psychosocial stress or assets interact with toxic environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution) to influence health; (d) the role of work conditions in fostering worker well-being and identifying workplace policies and practices that enable workers to be healthy.
Click below to read more about her research focal areas!
Explore Focal Areas
Psychosocial Epidemiology
An area of some contention has been whether psychological stress is truly a mechanism by which social disparities influence health…
Health and Well-being: Positive Psychosocial Factors
A major focus of my work is understanding what psychological and social factors promote resilience and reduce disease risk…
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…
Interrelationships between Social and Physical Environments and Effects on Health
I have conducted research evaluating the hypothesis that social stress may exacerbate toxic exposures within the physical environment, thereby potentiating social disparities in health…
Resources for Measuring Well-Being
Dr. Kubzansky has put together a non-comprehensive list of many of the most commonly used well-being measures that have been linked with physical health.