About Stephanie Cook
Dr. Cook is an assistant professor in the departments of Biostatistics and Social and Behavioral Sciences and at New York University School of Public Health. She is also the Director of the Attachment and Health Disparities Research Lab (AHDL). Dr. Stephanie Cook’s overarching research focus is to understand how structural- and individual-level minority stressors (i.e., violence, discrimination, and hate) contribute to mental health, physical health, and health behaviors across the life span and in the virtual and physical worlds. Further, she seeks to understand how features of close relationships can exacerbate or buffer the negative effects of minority stress on health. Her work primarily focuses on young adults transitioning to adulthood who are at the intersection of racial/ethnic and sexual orientation status. In addition, much of her current work examines the links between minority stress (i.e., daily experiences of discrimination) and biological markers of stress and disease (e.g., cortisol and c-reactive protein).Dr. Cook’s substantive methodological and statistical focus is in the development and application of longitudinal study designs (i.e., intensive longitudinal designs) for determining the ways in which dynamic changes in features of minority stress (e.g., daily and momentary discrimination events) are associated with changes in risk behaviors and physical health (e.g., sexual risk and substance use, pre-clinical cardiovascular disease, and biological stress) among racial/ethnic and/or sexual minority young adults. Dr. Cook has won numerous awards for her research, service, and teaching including the Matilda White Riley Distinguished Early-Stage Investigator Award from the National Institutes of Health and the Emerging Scholar recognition from Diverse Magazine.
