STRESS AND BEHAVIOR IN HEALTH AND DISEASE

Duke University, Durham NC

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Abstract

This renewal application for a post-doctoral training program that maintains and enhances a training environment to foster the development of the knowledge, skills, and the perspective essential to interdisciplinary research in the field of behavioral medicine. Support is requested for 8 trainees, half with basic research and half with clinical backgrounds, who would enter the program after receiving their degree or after 1-6 years of clinical training. A two-year program is proposed. The first year's activities are organized into four areas: 1) a biweekly Behavioral Medicine Research Seminar; 2) advanced training in biostatistics and epidemiology as need; 3) A Monthly Integrative Medicine journal club; and 4) acquisition of directed research in the preceptor's laboratory. The second year will be focused on the completion of the trainee's own research project. Research areas available to trainees include: the neurobiology of stress in animals; human stress psychophysiology; molecular biology of stress; epidemiological studies of psychosocial factors in disease; human and animal psychoimmunology; racial factors in stress and hypertension; developmental issues in behavioral medicine; and behavioral and pharmacologic approaches to the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of stress-related medical disorders. Training faculty conduct behavioral medicine research on the disorders of cancer, coronary heart, disease, depression, diabetes mellitus, pain syndromes, osteoarthritis, pain disorder, and depression. Disciplines included in the program are pathology, psychology (clinical, experimental, social, and biological), neurobiology, pharmacology, immunology, epidemiology, biostatistics, psychiatry, internal medicine, and cardiology. An interdisciplinary approach to behavioral medicine will be fostered by the example of senior faculty and specific encouragement of collaborative projects among trainees. The objective is the development of behavioral medicine researchers skilled in their own specialty but able to collaborate successfully with specialists in other fields on research questions of importance to behavioral medicine.