Laura is an NIH-funded behavioral health researcher with a penchant for crafting and refining written language.
Laura is a health psychologist interested in understanding how psychosocial factors impact mental health, physical health, and health behaviors and harnessing this knowledge to promote health and well-being across the lifespan. Drawing upon foundations in health and social psychology, human development, and nutrition, her work employs survey, behavioral, mHealth (mobile health), and physiological assessments in experimental, field, intervention, and observational panel studies. Laura also holds methodological expertise in the collection and analysis of physiological measures (i.e., cortisol, heart rate) and has assessed mental health (e.g., stress, depressive symptoms) and health behaviors in young adults, adults, and older adults. Over the past 13 years, Laura’s research and collaborations have produced 15 publications and over 35 scientific presentations across the U.S.
Laura has analyzed data from NORC’s National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) to examine links between the social world and health; for instance, her most recent work examines associations between weight discrimination and diabetes. Laura has also utilized data from the NSHAP COVID-19 Study and NORC’s General Social Survey (GSS) to understand changes in mental health that accompanied the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2023, Laura was awarded an NIH R21 grant focusing on the behavior of comfort eating in a national census-matched sample of U.S. adults. For this project, Laura (Principal Investigator) and her team will apply a lifespan, mixed-methods approach to 1) understand the developmental etiology of comfort eating; 2) identify factors associated with self-efficacy to quit comfort eating; and 3) determine which sub-populations may be at elevated risk for poor health associated with comfort eating.
This NIH grant builds upon over a decade of Laura’s research evaluating the psychophysiological effects of comfort eating. Laura was awarded several competitive local and national fellowships that supported this line of research, including a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship, a UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship, and an NIH NCI T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Preventive Medicine. Her experimental and intervention comfort eating research was also supported by her receipt of a University of California Intercampus Consortium on Health Psychology Trainee Seed Grant, as well as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Evidence for Action Grant.
An avid writer and editor, Laura enjoys bringing research ideas to life through written language in the grants she submits with NORC colleagues and non-profits, academics, and organizations across the country. She cut her teeth as a Writing Consultant at UCLA, helping graduate students from all fields polish their scientific writing.
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Education
T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship
Northwestern University
PhD
University of California, Los Angeles
MA
University of California, Los Angeles
BS
Cornell University
Honors & Awards
Dissertation Year Fellowship | 2017
University of California, Los Angeles
Graduate Research Fellowship | 2014
National Science Foundation
Project Contributions
Publications
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opens in new tab"Home Alone Together: Differential Links between Momentary Contexts and Real-Time Loneliness among Older Adults from Chicago during Versus before the COVID-19 Pandemic."
Journal Article | July 17, 2022
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opens in new tab"A Pavlovian Intervention to Condition Comforting Effects of Fruits."
Journal Article | June 20, 2022
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opens in new tab"Can Remote Social Contact Replace In-Person Contact to Protect Mental Health among Older Adults?"
Journal Article | December 1, 2021
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opens in new tab"Momentary Loneliness among Older Adults: Contextual Differences and their Moderation by Gender and Race/Ethnicity."
Journal Article | October 31, 2021
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opens in new tab"Obesity Status on Associations between Cancer-Related Beliefs and Health Behaviors in Cancer Survivors: Implications for Patient-Clinician Communication."
Journal Article | March 8, 2021
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opens in new tab"A mHealth Intervention to Preserve and Promote Ideal Cardiovascular Health in College Students: Design and Protocol of a Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial."
Journal Article | December 16, 2020