Research

I am a human biologist and biological anthropologist with training in cardiovascular epidemiology.  My interests broadly span developmental and intergenerational biology, epigenetics, health inequality, the biology of reproduction, the history and misuse of the race concept and the psychobiology of social relationships. Since 1998 I have worked closely with colleagues at the Office of Population Studies, in Cebu, Philippines, on the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey (CLHNS).  The CLHNS is a longitudinal birth cohort located in metropolitan Cebu, Philippines, that enrolled more than 3000 pregnant women in 1983 and has since followed them, their offspring and now grand-offspring for 40 years.  I and my students and collaborators use these data to explore a wide array of questions, including the long-term impacts of early environments on cardiovascular disease, aging, reproduction and immunity, the intergenerational determinants of telomere length, and the intergenerational impacts of early life nutritional stress on epigenetics and offspring birth outcomes.  Our currently funded work is re-contacting the cohort and their mothers to provide updated epigenetic, survey and biomarker data, which we are using to explore the long-term impacts of lifelong experiences on the pace of aging in this population. My current and former students and postdocs have explored these general themes in Cebu, but also in New Zealand, Alaska, South Africa and the United States.

Cebu street scene, Philippines