Wednesday, September 21, 2016
12 PM – 1:15 PM
Room 2086 AIRB

 

Speaker: Sara B Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, Associate Professor of Pediatrics & Public Health, Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine & Public Health; Director, Rales Center for the Integration of Health & Education

Abstract:
This talk will focus on how the social environment shapes the basic building blocks of self-regulatory development (cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physiological) in the first two decades of life, and the implications of this knowledge for efforts to reduce child and health and educational disparities.

Biography:
Dr. Sara B Johnson Ph.D., MPH is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University Schools of Medicine & Public Health. Dr. Johnson is also Director of General Academic Pediatrics Fellowship and Director of the Rales Center for the Integration of Health & Education. She holds a Ph.D. in Health Policy & Management from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and an MPH degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene & Public Health. Dr. Johnson’s research aims to integrate developmental biology and sociology to explain population- level health disparities. She has spent more than 10 years to understand the complex mechanisms through which early life environments, particularly adverse environments, shape health, development, and learning, with implications for health and achievement across the life course. Her interdisciplinary research has focused on two related areas: (1) adolescent brain development and health behavior; and (2) the impact of stress and adversity on child health and development. Her research has involved substantial use of salivary biomarkers to index individuals’ response to environmental stimuli.