Research Statement

My academic interest is autonomic function during social yielding, and its impact on health. My professional interest is to bridge collaboration around the field of human ecology. Hence, I study the physiology of contextual stress responses, and engage in action research.

Individual health, social endeavor

“Tell me your ZIP code, and I’ll tell you your health risks.” During my medical training, insights on social determinants of health started fighting their way into the medical curricula. My first contact with research took place in the epidemiology department of the University of Turin, where I witnessed the differences observed in a regional health equity audit: who you were, strongly influenced your survival rate. Meanwhile at home (Panama), a public debate banned universal comprehensive sexual education, showing me that collective actions impacted intergenerational cycles of inequity. A key factor followed the social gradient of these inequities: agency. Health was linked to the chronic stress of not feeling in control of our own lives. Hence, I sought to participate in research close to the community and its perceptions, coordinating and collecting data on Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAPs) on Dengue Fever in Panama City with the Gorgas Institute of Health Sciences, and collecting and analyzing online data on beliefs about educational excellence in the public opinion in Panama with the Center for Educational Research. My approach to research became motivated by the understanding that our beliefs, identities, and our perceptions of others' shape our behavior, performance, and health, and that efficient public policies must reflect this.

Relational interactions, physiological strokes

And yet these identities, beliefs, and feelings are formed through our developmental stages. While advocating for a biopsychosocial lens in the medical profession, I realized that our most neglected and powerful health protective factors were both relational and developmental: prenatal environment, quality of relationships with caregivers, and neighborhood quality, all influenced adult health outcomes through epigenetics, behavioral, and physical routes. In other words, our every interaction shapes our psychophysiology, priming our long-term health. Particularly, autonomic physiology indexed by Heart Rate Variability (HRV) has proven a strong predictor of health and well-being. At this point in my career, I joined the Human Development, PhD Program in Cornell University, under the mentorship of Dr. Marlen Gonzalez in the Life History Lab. My lab duties train me in neural and developmental research, from managing research assistants, to administrative tasks for behavioral, survey, and fMRI data collection that seeks to understand the trade-offs of biologically calibrating to different developmental contexts, as well as the neural underpinnings of life history-related behaviors, like social vigilance, cognitive control, reward sensitivity. My original research contributed the physiological correlates of self and social regulation, conceived as a marker of health susceptibility to chronic stress. Relying on a secondary analysis, I added a contextual and gender edge to current theories predicting autonomic responses to stress. Part of the skills needed for this project I developed through a fellowship from the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. Relying on Python and MATLAB for data processing, and R for multiple regression analyses, this preliminary data showed that higher baseline HRV predicted greater reactivity, positively interacting with the female gender and the presence of a partner before stress. These results suggest that both baseline HRV and receptivity to social resources may impact resilience to stress, and that future research should account for gendered effects. The subtleties of relational interactions, and the emotional texture of a sense of control, are challenging to describe and quantify. Hence, I sought opportunities to develop qualitative research skills to both capture those affective nuances, and eventually include community members in the practice of science. I supported data collection through literature reviews, focus groups, analysis, and report writing for the evaluation of a community engaged learning program, looking at how participation in a service program affected civic engagement, intergroup competency, and career attainment. Consecutively, through a fellowship from the Cornell Action Research Collaborative, I conducted focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and supported analysis to co-produce a better understanding of the situation and needs of transitional housing residents.

Fleeting responses, enduring tear

The wear and tear of chronic stress on human physiology (allostatic load), has shown to be distributed unevenly across groups, leading to worse health outcomes for some. Factors that protect us from such risks (i.e., social resources) have a heterogeneous impact on those groups, though the physiological mechanisms of these differences are not understood. I continue to envision health and wellbeing as a collective construction on the canvas of our minds and bodies. From perceiving others as a resource, to signaling for connection, to benefitting from the proximity of safe conspecifics, I plan on studying the autonomic component of the effects of social support. I seek to understand if the effects of chronic stress are buffered by yielding to social presence as a bioenergetic strategy (González, 2021). For this purpose, regulation is understood as the psychophysiological processes that -calibrated to a particular ecology- enable goal-directed behavior across changing circumstances, as well as to the processes that maintain homeostasis in an organism (Thayer et al., 2009). My current research questions seek to replicate my previous findings under different types of stressors, cognitive and social. As a collaboration, I’m preparing to look for allostatic load differences between individuals who show greater and lower neural social yielding during a cognitive task. My dissertation work will observe dyadic physiology and individual performance under manipulated social stressors, and their relationship to allostatic load markers. During my career, I have centered around communication and community efforts, creating educational material for students and the public, leading local and international advocacy efforts for public and global health, and facilitating workshops and mentoring peers. My hope is that we will talk about social relationships and their quality as our primary health determinant, as much as we talk about diet and exercise, and inform public policy accordingly. Ultimately, I seek to bridge spaces between clinicians, researchers, community, and decision makers around the science of human ecology.