Rural African American Young Adults' Pathways to Psychosocial and Physical Health

Dr. Miller's roles will be to (a) advise the PI on issues related to data collection in large-scale, a biobehavioral, research endeavors (b) provide input on the conceptual and mechanistic basis for linkages between socioeconomic, psychosocial, and immunologic data, (c) in years 4-5, oversee the analysis of circulating and supernatant interleukin-6 that will be done in his laboratory at Northwestern, and (d) participate in hypothesis development, statistical analyses, and manuscript preparation. Dr. Chen's roles will be to (a) advise on measures and data collection around linking family and childhood psychosocial factors to health-relevant physiological measures; (b) provide consultation on the collection of blood samples in low SES, minority samples; and (c) participate in data analyses and manuscript writing. To index the extent of ongoing inflammation, serum C-reactive protein (CRP) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) will be measured using commercially available high-sensitivity ELISA kits, from R&D Systems; Minneapolis, MN. To index how aggressively cells respond to microbial challenges, we will stimulate participants' leukocytes with ligands that activate toll-like receptors, and monitor subsequent production of pro-inflammatory cytokines.