Positive Psychological Functioning: An Enduring Asset for Healthy Aging
Stress and negative emotions have long been implicated as causal factors contributing to heart disease; however, the official position of the American Heart Association and biomedicine more generally is that stress is not an established risk factor. Research over the last decade and a half increasingly suggests that this position may need to be revised. Dr. Kubzansky will briefly consider the evidence that stress and emotions influence heart health. She will discuss how looking at both negative and positive emotions, as well as considering emotion-related behavioral and biological processes may provide insight and a more definitive assessment of whether and how emotions significantly influence physical health.
Presenter: Laura D. Kubsanzky, PhD, MPH is Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Kubzansky received her Ph.D. (social psychology) from the University of Michigan, and completed a two year postdoctoral fellowship in social epidemiology as well as a M.P.H. at the Harvard School of Public Health. She has published extensively on the role of psychological and social factors in health, with a particular focus on the effects of stress and emotion on heart disease. Widely recognized for her work demonstrating that emotions play an important role in the development of a number of disease outcomes including cardiovascular disease, lung function decline, and cancer, she is a frequent speaker on the topic. She also conducts research on whether stress, emotion and other psychological factors may help to explain the relationship between social status and health.
She is co-Director of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness, Co-Director for the JPB Environmental Health Fellows Program at Harvard University, and Director of the Society and Health Psychophysiology Laboratory at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Associate Site Director for the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program at Harvard University. She is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. She is PI or co-investigator on a wide variety of grants funded through the Veterans Administration, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, EPA, NIH and others.
Location:
70 Francis Street, BWH
Shapiro Breakout Room, Shapiro Building, 1st Fl