Rosalind Wright, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine and public health at Harvard University, will discuss “The Role of Psychological Stress in Asthma and Other Atopic Disorders” on Thursday, April 22 at 12:30 p.m. in Thompson 620. This is the final talk in this year’s Mellon-funded CPPA Grants Workshop Speaker Series.
Wright is Associate Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and also a faculty member in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Professor Wright is known for work that incorporates environmental considerations into the treatment of disease, and helped to pioneer the concept that social factors can be significant contributors to such chronic conditions as childhood asthma. She is co-investigator for the Asthma Coalition on Community, Environment, and Social Stress, a multi-method, longitudinal study based in Boston.
Professor Wright will focus in her talk on evidence linking psychological factors to childhood asthma, allergy risk, and lung function. Wright’s research shows that beginning in utero, aberrant immune responses shaped by disruptions to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis can contribute to lifelong problems with lung structure and function. Both pre- and post-natal emotional stress—including stress produced by violence and chronic poverty—can disrupt HPA functioning and influence neuroendocrine, autonomic, and immune inflammatory processes that affect asthma and other atopic disorders. In short, according to Wright, psychological stress disrupts the same biological pathways as pollutants from dense urban traffic or tobacco smoke. Wright’s findings have important implications for how physicians talk with and treat their patients, and also for public policies that address such problems as domestic violence and urban poverty.
While at UMass, Wright will also work with Assistant Professor of Resource Economics and Public Policy Sylvia Brandt, who is developing a grant proposal for external support of a transdisciplinary project on the social costs of childhood asthma. Brandt is a Fellow in the 2009-2010 CPPA Grants Workshop, which is supported by the UMass Amherst Office of Faculty Development’s Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This talk is free and open to the public. Brownbag lunches are welcome.
For more information, contact Susan Newton, Associate Director for Research at CPPA (413-577-0478, snewton @pubpol .umass. edu)