[Brownbag] Description of talk on Fri. (May 23)

[Liz Ozselcuk]

Here is a bonus end of year for Brown Bag members: A talk by recent 
Demography graduate Omer Gersten:

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Title: Does lower subjective social status yield riskier biomarker profiles?

Speaker: Omer Gersten, Ph.D. (Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica)

Day: Friday, May 23rd

Time: 12:00-1:00pm

Place: 155 Donner Lab (http://www.berkeley.edu/map/maps/AB56.html), UC
Berkeley campus

Host: Prof. Paola S. Timiras, Molecular and Cell Biology Department

Abstract: This talk discusses work investigating the link between greater
social status and better health. Using a nationally representative survey
conducted in Taiwan, the study presented on investigates whether lower
levels of social status are associated with worse biomarker profiles. Such
profiles are thought to relate to stress experienced over the lifecourse
and are known to increase the risk of a variety of negative health
conditions. The main finding of this work is that there is little
connection between the measures of social status and the biomarker
profiles. More research using a wider variety of measurements of the
biomarkers (and social stress) are thus needed to further support this
negative finding. Papers related to the talk can be found here:
http://idv.sinica.edu.tw/omer

Speaker: Dr. Gersten earned his B.A. in Sociology, M.P.H., and Ph.D. in
Demography all from UC Berkeley. His work has been published in journals
such as the International Journal of Epidemiology, Demographic Research,
and Social Science & Medicine.