Please join the Department of Biostatistics for this exciting Seminar Series!
PRESENTER BIO: Dr. Stephanie Cook aims to understand the pathways and mechanisms linking attachment, minority stress, and health among disadvantaged individuals. She examines how the inter- and intra-personal features of close relationships influence the health of racial/ethnic and sexual minorities.
ABSTRACT: Secure attachment relationships are critical drivers of mental and physical health across the life course. Moreover, individual differences in attachment functioning are noted in the population, indicating a need to understand the processes and mechanisms by which individuals develop relationships, cope with stress, and, in effect, maintain their health across the life course. Though current theoretical paradigms of attachment indicate how individuals respond to stress, these theories do not adequately account for the unique impact of social stressors on individual health and well-being, which may be of critical importance in understanding the drivers of health in marginalized populations. The negative social valuation of a marginalized identity—such as a sexual minority identity or a racial minority identity—causes stress in persons with a marginalized social status beyond the level of stress that people generally experience; this excess stress has been named minority stress. However, many theories of minority stress are limited and inadequately delineate the associations between attachment orientation, stress, and subsequent health outcomes. Making these theoretical and empirical linkages is important for understanding how to address health disparities among disadvantaged individuals who are at heightened risk for experiencing minority stress compared to other individuals (e.g. African American youth, sexual minority men). Therefore, one of the main objectives of my research is to understand the pathways and mechanisms linking attachment, minority stress and health among disadvantaged individuals. In this talk I will outline three interlocking strands of my research. First, I explore how adult attachment orientation is associated with HIV risk in a community sample of Black gay and bisexual men transitioning to adulthood. Second, I will illustrate how daily microaggressions are associated with stress physiology among sexual minority young men, and how features of close relationships moderate this association. Third, I will discuss future directions which include an introduction to a new strand of my research in which I seek to understand how adult attachment, in the context of minority stress is associated with pre-clinincal cardiovascular disease.