W. Thomas Boyce, MD Professor University of British Columbia College for Interdisciplinary Studies http://www.developingchild.net/bios/boyce.html Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 3:00-4:00 PM Neuroscience Bldg., Rm. C, 6001 Executive Blvd. Social Stratification and Health: Is There a Developmental Biology of Misfortune? Abstract: Beginning in prenatal life, socioeconomic disparities in early experience and exposures set lifelong trajectories of health, illness and development. Though the critical importance of early experience has been long substantiated in the observations of developmentalists, physicians and parents, only recently have the biological foundations of such effects been systematically studied and elucidated. The young child’s biological sensitivity to social context—as indexed by reactivity to challenge in the autonomic and adrenocortical stress response systems—appears to be one core mechanism by which socially partitioned early experiences are linked to patterns of maladaptive development and risks to mental and physical health. W. Thomas Boyce, MD, is the Sunny Hill Health Centre/BC Leadership Chair in Child Development at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and a Professor in the Faculties of Graduate Studies and Medicine. He is also a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advance Research and the American Pediatric Society. A social epidemiologist and developmental-behavioral pediatrician, his research addresses the interplay among neurobiological, genetic and psychosocial processes that lead to socioeconomically partitioned differences in childhood morbidities. His research has demonstrated how psychological stress and neurobiological reactivity to aversive social contexts operate conjointly to increase risks of physical and mental health disorders in childhood. His work seeks a new synthesis between biomedical and social epidemiologic understanding of human pathogenesis, with particular attention to its population health implications. He earned an M.D. from the Baylor College of Medicine and completed pediatrics residency at the University of California, San Francisco

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