Angela Garcia

ANGELA R. GARCIA, then a graduate student at University of California, Santa Barbara, California, was awarded a grant in April 2017 to aid research on ‘Do Neuroendocrine-Immune Interactions Mediate Links Between Social Disparities and Metabolic Risk among Honduran Immigrant Women?,’ supervised by Dr. Aaron Blackwell. Metabolic diseases like diabetes and atherosclerosis are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the globe and are increasingly prevalent in low- and middle-income countries, many of which face the added burden of infectious diseases. Though changes in metabolic health are associated with social stressors affecting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis– a primary hormonal system through which social stressors perceived by the brain can affect physiological processes– the complete pathways between social conditions and health in developing populations remain poorly understood. In this dissertation work, the grantee examines links between perceived social economic status (SES), hormonal measures of stress, immune function, and metabolic risk in one such population, immigrant women on the island of Utila. Utila is an island off the coast of Honduras, populated by people from two distinct ethnic backgrounds, English-speaking Utilian natives and Spanish-speaking Honduran immigrants from the mainland. As on the mainland, Honduran immigrants on Utila face increasing rates of metabolic syndrome coupled with persistently high exposure to parasites and pathogens. This work evaluates the theory that contemporary social stratification and inequality exert effects on disease risk, in part because marginalized individuals are more vulnerable to chronic experiences of stress and thus more likely to experience neuroendocrine and immune dysregulation by social-environmental impacts