Leadership

Nancy E. Adler, PhD

Co-Director, COAST

As director of CHC, Dr. Adler fosters interdisciplinary research, bridging social, clinical and basic sciences. Understanding the etiology and treatment of obesity requires such an interdisciplinary approach. Although not an identified obesity researcher, Dr. Adler was a pioneer in bringing together researchers and clinicians to develop COAST, which is now supported by and housed in the CHC.

Dr. Adler's current research is in two areas: reproductive health, and socioeconomic status and health. In the first, she is examining the extent to which perceptions of the risk of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy influence adolescent sexual behavior. She is also heading a program project studying psychosocial, social and medical aspects of infertility treatment. In the second area, she leads a multidisciplinary, international research group that is examining the mechanisms by which socioeconomic status (SES) influences health. The research group is particularly interested in the role of SES-related exposure to stress and the "wear-and-tear" on the body of repeated adaptations.

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Elissa S. Epel, PhD

Co-Director, COAST

Email: eepel@lppi.ucsf.edu

Elissa S. Epel, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSF. She is also a faculty member in the Health Psychology Postdoctoral Program, the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, and the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program. She is one of the founders of COAST, and is serving as a Co-Director. She received a BA in psychology from Stanford University, and a PhD in clinical psychology from Yale University, with a focus on health psychology. Through her research on stress and training in the Yale Center for Eating and Weight disorders, she became interested in the intricate relationships between chronic psychological stress, eating behavior, and energy balance. She completed a clinical internship focusing on Behavioral Medicine at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

Her research examines relationships among chronic stress, social status, coping processes, and neuroendocrine and metabolic sequelae. She has several ongoing laboratory and field studies examining questions such as: Does type of stress response (psychological, neuroendocrine/peptide) help determine why some people eat less during stress whereas others eat more? Does chronic stress really lead to abdominal fat distribution and insulin resistance? Drive for calorically dense food? Do stress and obesity accelerate aging of mitotic cells? Lastly, she is interested in mechanisms through which stress reduction may lead to improvements in metabolic health.

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Barbara Laraia, PhD, MPH, RD

Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine, UCSF
Co-Director, COAST

Email: LaraiaB@chc.ucsf.edu

Dr. Laraia is a public health nutrition investigator with a special interest in the relationships between food policy, the food environment and health. She has expertise in qualitative methods, program evaluation, community-based research and nutritional epidemiology. Her research focuses on household food security status and neighborhood effects on diet, weight, perinatal outcomes, and other maternal child health issues, especially among vulnerable populations. Her current projects include: measurement issues of the food and physical activity environments; influences of the food environment on diet and weight among postpartum women; understanding the role that tiendas (Latino grocery stores) play in diet quality among Latinos.

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