Affiliated Research Centers
Biomarker Network
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The NIA funded Biomarker Network is a group of scientists dedicated to improving the measurement of biological risk for late life health outcomes in large representative samples of populations. See their website and resources at here.
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Science of Behavior Change (SOBC)
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The Science of Behavior Change (SOBC) program uses a systematic approach to discovering the underlying mechanisms, i.e. “the how and the why,” behind successful behavior change. Unhealthy behaviors—such as smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, overeating, and a sedentary lifestyle— contribute to negative health outcomes and common diseases. Effective approaches to adopting and maintaining healthy behaviors remain few. Though some interventions may lead to changes in behavior in some people, scientists rarely know how or why they work. SOBC researchers are using a scientific method to investigate how and why people sustain healthy behaviors. Having a better understanding of how and why successful behavior change occurs is the key to providing blueprints for effective and efficient behavior interventions that could reliably improve health outcomes. SOBC brings together scientists from various disciplines, spanning basic and translational science, to support research across different health-related behaviors and to improve our understanding of the underlying principles of behavior change.
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The Stress Measurement Network leadership presented to SOBC researchers during a grand rounds presentation in September 2016 on stress measurement and our response to Jerome Kagan’s recent (2016) article in Perspectives on Psychological Science. The conversation and corresponding slides were recorded. The presentation can be found below.
Psychosocial Measurement Recommendations for Obesity Research
An NIH working group, ADOPT, has compiled a short battery of measures of stress, affect, and eating behavior that are strongly recommended to investigators for inclusion in clinical trials of obesity (as well as relevant mechanistic studies in humans).
ADOPT Core Measures project also has a home on the NHLBI website. This page serves as a landing page and resource for those looking to learn about the project and hoping to find all relevant information in one place.
The GEM website hosts detailed information on the measures, and hosts “working lists” that anyone can edit or add to. The NHLBI.gov site links to GEM as well as to each individual recommended measure.
Gateway to Global Aging
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The Gateway to Global Aging website is a platform for population survey data on aging around the world. This site offers a digital library of survey questions, a search for finding comparable questions across surveys, and identically defined variables for cross-country analysis. To understand more about how to use this website, review this Gateway to Global Aging Data presentation in the PDF below describing the harmonization project by Dr. Jinkook Lee.
Center for Studies on Human Stress
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The Centre for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) is dedicated to improving the physical and mental health of Canadians by empowering individuals with scientifically grounded information on the effects of stress on the brain and body.
Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness
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The Center hopes to achieve a transformation from deficit-based thinking to an understanding of well-being in a broader sense, with a focus on health assets and resources. By fostering this shift in mindset, the Center will help build greater well-being globally for all.
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Funded through the initiative and generosity of Mr. Sammy Lee and the Lee Kum Kee family of Hong Kong, the Center represents a unique opportunity to advance scientific understanding of the connections between positive psychological well-being, positive social environments, and physical health. Integrating three key areas of focus—basic science research, intervention research, and translational and communication research—the Center also aims to develop tools to more accurately measure physiological well-being and to translate scientific findings to influence public health practice and policy.
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Telomere Research Network
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The National Institute on Environmental Sciences and National Institute of Aging have funded a new Telomere Measurement Network. Part of the goal of the network is to improve the rigor and reproducibility of measurement of telomere length (TL) in epidemiological studies, and address other challenges in determining the extent to which TL is a sentinel of environmental exposures, psychosocial stress and disease susceptibility. We also aim to promote a growing collaborative community of interdisciplinary scientists for promoting the science and dialogue on TL as a predictor of health and aging. To learn more about the TRN, see our website (trn.tulane.edu). Toward this, we support pilot projects each year, targeted for postdocs or Early Stage Investigators who will benefit from the network and mentoring.
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Stressnetwork.ch ​
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The mission of the stressnetwork.ch is to promote stress research in Switzerland by raising public and political awareness for the importance of stress research, fostering scientific interaction between different areas of stress research, improving communication between the researchers and the public, and supporting fundraising for stress research.
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Network for Emotional Well-Being (NEW-B)
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The Network for Emotional Well-being: Science, Practice, and Measurement brings together leading experts from UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Harvard to create a cohesive transdisciplinary network of scientists interested in EWB. We are a collaborative initiative of research scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health to advance the scientific understanding and measurement of emotional well-being.​
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UCSF Blackburn Lab - Telomere Core Services and Resources​
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The Blackburn Telomere Research Core was created in 2009 to meet the needs of researchers to examine the role of telomere maintenance in human aging, diseases, and risk factors. To date, the Core has provided telomere assays through recharge to over 100 research teams from 50 institutions (US and 7 other countries) that resulted in over 150 publications.​