Bio

Edith Chen is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Psychology and Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.  Her research focuses on psychobiological pathways explaining the effects of low socioeconomic status (SES) on physical health outcomes in children.  Her work also investigates psychosocial factors that protect against the effects of low SES on health, with a focus on individual psychological factors (such as coping) and on social relationships (e.g., family relationships, mentoring relationships).  Recent collaborative work has begun to incorporate neuroimaging in terms of understanding how social relationships moderate the links between SES and brain connectivity in underrepresented populations, or how brain connectivity moderates associations between SES-related risks and health.