Principal Investigator:

Zaneta Thayer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. She is a biological anthropologist specializing in human biology and a proud member of the Dartmouth College Class of 2008. When not studying all things stress, health, and inequity related, she can be found trying to relieve her stress outdoors or with her family. Her CV can be found here:

Current lab members

PostDoc

Dr. Luisa Rivera is a critical biocultural anthropologist interested in the way social inequality, trauma, and violence impact reproductive and maternal-infant health. Her research also examines the rise of epigenomic and molecular approaches to understanding how stress during development impacts health and the implications of social epigenetics for health policy. She conducts research on the embodied impacts of structural violence and intergenerational trauma in post-war communities in Guatemala as well as historically marginalized communities of color in the United States. At Dartmouth she is mentored by Dr. Zaneta Thayer in Anthropology and Dr. Brock Christensen at the Christensen Molecular Epidemiology Lab at the Geisel School of Medicine.

PhD

Chlöe Sweetman: Chlöe is broadly interested in the applications of evolutionary medicine to understand how the confluence of biology, culture, and environment can influence outcomes in human biology and health. Her current research explores the ways in which non-human milk consumption has shaped patterns of human biology.

Medical students

Katherine Hartnett

Suchi Jain

Undergraduate

Marina Wang

Namitha Alluri

Sovi-Mya Wellons

Beldina (also known as Bel) Orinda is a student at Washington University in St. Louis, studying Anthropology on the Global Health and Environment track and Psychology. Her interests lie at the intersection between race, culture, and public health, and how social determinants of health inform one’s quality of life and access to care. She especially enjoys studying this through the lenses of disability and maternal-infant health. As part of the CARE team, she is excited to assess how mothers navigate the new realities and challenges that Covid-19 brings to an already stressful experience and how norms surrounding childbirth are upended and transformed by the pandemic. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with family, singing, writing anything from blog posts to essays, babysitting, and volunteering in her community.

Past mentees

Postdoctoral fellows

Dr. Glorieuse Uwizeye was a postdoctoral fellow for the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College and is now an Assistant Professor of Nursing at Western University. She is interested in studying the intersecting impacts of political, socioeconomic, and environmental factors on development and adult health. Her research program focuses on health impacts of genocide and epigenetic mechanisms linking prenatal exposure to genocide and adulthood health outcomes. She enjoys socializing, listening to people, and seeing nature!

Dr. Theresa Gildner

Dr. Rick Smith

PhD Student

Charlotte Farewell: Charlotte’s dissertation evaluated the impact of timing and duration of adversity on obesity risk among children in the Growing Up in New Zealand cohort study. Her work was funded by NSF and has resulted in multiple peer reviewed manuscripts. Charlotte is now a Senior Research Instructor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Masters

Meredith Wilson: Merri’s Master’s project investigating the relationship between acculturation and health among young Middle Eastern American adults living in the Denver area.  Merri published (3!) papers during her Master’s work. She is now working on her PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

Undergraduates

Ale Geisel-Zamora (Class of 2023) studied anthropology at Dartmouth. She is interested in the intersection of biological and cultural anthropology, specifically how inaccurate cultural representations may have biological effects on individuals. Ale worked with Dr. Thayer on a mixed methods senior honors thesis addressing motivations for TikTok use and physiological responses to TikTok among young adults from Aotearoa New Zealand. She presented her research at three professional scientific conferences as an undergraduate, and was awarded the best undergraduate presentation at the Human Biology Association. She was awarded the Westbrook Thesis Prize for the best honors thesis.

Erika Hernandez (Class of 2022): Erika majored in anthropology and minoring in human-centered design and Asian studies. During the summer of 2019, she interned with the NGO Uganda Village Project, where she developed an interest in water access and reproductive health. Erika completed her senior honors thesis with Dr. Thayer on acculturative stress, mental health, and migration among Nikkei Peruvian females in Peru and Japan. She was awarded the Westbrook Thesis Prize for the best honors thesis. She received a Stamps Scholars Fellowship and a Presidential Scholars Fellowship to support this work. 

Grace Rubin (Class of 2022): Grace was an anthropology major and completed her senior honors thesis with Drs. Thayer and Dominy. Grace’s thesis explored whether oral contraceptive use moderated the previously established relationship between MHC-compatability and scent preference. She received high honors for her thesis. Grace is now a PhD student in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

Katie Fearon(Class of 2023) studied anthropology and biology. She is interested in the intersection of medicine and social justice, specifically how health and various societal systems and hierarchies affect each other. Katie worked with Professor Thayer to produce pilot data for a project studying the effects of racial discrimination on heart rate variability.

Emily Lu (Class of 2023) is interested in anthropology, global health, and public policy. In studying the social and historical determinants of current health disparities, she hopes to become a better advocate for more equitable and evidence-based policies within healthcare. She worked with Professor Thayer as a Presidential Scholar to assess the impact of stress while undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technologies on birth outcomes. She presented her research at two(!) international conferences and has a manuscript from this work currently in review.

Aditi Gupta (Class of 2023) studied anthropology while on the pre-med track. She is interested in reducing gender-related health disparities, specifically inequities related to period poverty. As a Gold Award Girl Scout, Aditi has implemented a menstrual health awareness campaign for young girls in India and worked with the non-profit CARE to publish a tutorial on reusable pads. She worked with Professor Thayer as a Presidential Scholar to assess the impact of stress while undergoing Assisted Reproductive Technologies on birth outcomes. She presented her research at two(!) international conferences and has a manuscript from this work currently in review.

Sara Fragione (Class of 2023) studied anthropology and followed a pre-medical track. She is interested in the intersection between social issues and health outcomes, and seeks to understand how a humanistic perspective in medicine and public health can be used to improve the healthcare system. She worked with Professor Thayer to investigate different methods of measuring inequalities in society and health.

Rena Schwartz (Class of 2022) studied Anthropology, Global Health, and Psychology. She is interested in how the environment shapes human biology and well-being, specifically in relation to social inequities. Rena seeks to understand the relationship between social and environmental factors and human health. She worked with Professor Thayer to investigate the impact of climate change on preterm birth biology.

Maggie Sherin (Geisel Medical School) is a Dartmouth grad (Class of 2018) who majored in Biology and minored in Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. During undergraduate, she spent her off-term interning at a rural medical clinic in Mt. Elgon, Kenya, studied abroad in Hyderabad, India, and played on the Varsity Field Hockey team. After graduating, Maggie moved to New York City and worked as a pediatric research assistant at Northwell Health, focusing primarily on community breastfeeding education and promotion, and pediatric obesity prevention. In addition to her research with the CARE team, she has studied and written about long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) for adolescents and antepartum Tdap vaccination. She has also worked as a community birth doula for underserved women living in Manhattan and the Bronx, and as a coach for Girls on the Run. Maggie co-authored a paper on the CARE dataset.

Daniela Orozco Rendon (Geisel Medical School) was born in Tulua, Colombia. However, she spent the majority of her life in Houston, Texas with her parents. She attended the University of Houston and graduated in December 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in Medicine in Society. During her time there she was a part of the Honor’s College, a Residential Advisor and the Program Chair for her college’s Natural Science and Mathematics Student Leadership Board, where she strived to create a community within her college and with the surrounding area. As the daughter of immigrants and as she learned more about the surrounding community in Houston as well as the social determinants of health from her minor, she began to notice the struggles that many face with health care that arise from factors outside of the clinic. She went on to shadow in the Harris Health System, which are low-income clinics in the Houston area. While there she shadowed an OB-GYN and saw a variety of patients who each brought their own narrative and was drawn to the way that the physician, she shadowed, was able to cater to her patient’s needs. Something that she and her family had not always experienced in their own health care. Daniela also conducted research on Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis and other kidney diseases and through her work she was able to learn more about the health disparities related to kidney diseases. It was these experiences that turned her to the importance of social determinants and pushed her to seek out how she can better combat them as a physician. Outside of school Daniela enjoys learning to cook new meals, spending time with her cat, Lil’ Mamas, watching movies, drawing and painting.

Amanda Lu  (Class of 2021) majored in Economics and minored in Anthropology. She has traditionally pursued linguistic and cultural anthropology but became interested in biological anthropology due to its integration of social, cultural, and biological understandings of health and medicine. As a member of the CARE study, she is excited to use both quantitative and qualitative methods to help analyse the complex issues of healthcare and pregnancy during COVID-19.

Becky Milner (Class of 2021) studied Anthropology, Global Health and French. She loves learning about how health and wellness are perceived and experienced by different communities and is especially interested in maternal healthcare and wellbeing. As a member of the CARE team, she is excited to investigate how the pandemic is affecting women’s birth preferences and to work with her peers to support women across the country. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, paddle boarding and trying new breakfast foods.

Grace Alston (Class of 2022) majored in Anthropology and minored in French. Motivated by cultural and biological anthropology, her academic focus is human rites of passage concerning births and deaths. Grace joined the CARE study because of her interest in qualitatively analyzing cultural responses to administering maternal care amidst crisis.

Cecily Craighead (Class of 2022) studied Anthropology, Human-Centered Design, and Public Policy. Her interest in the CARE study is founded in qualitative research and her desire to assess and understand the needs of vulnerable populations in order to reach effective solutions. She is interested in exploring the intersection between cultural and biological anthropology in the field of public health, particularly concerning the social effects of the pandemic.

Odalis Hernandez Medrano ’21: Odalis is interested in undocumented mother’s maternity care experiences and birth outcomes. Given her interest in law, she is particularly interested in understanding how state-level policies affecting this population can in turn influence stress, healthcare access, and birth outcomes. She co-authored a manuscript with Thayer, currently in review, about how biomarkers have been incorporated in social inequities in health research.

Shelby Snyder ’21: Shelby is interested in understanding and promoting resilience within Native American communities. Following a reading course she became interested in studying the idea that powwow dance can be used as a health promotion intervention.

Nate Gallagher ’20: Nate’s senior honors thesis evaluated how incels appropriate scientific research, including outdating notions of racialized hierarchies, into their worldview. He was awarded the Westbrook Thesis Prize for best honors thesis.

Nadia Lake Clement ’21: Nadia is interested in biological anthropology and assisted with the implementation of the CARE study, including online questionnaire development and the creation of infographics for dissemination with participants and the public.

Sophie Montgomery ’19: Sophie was a Presidential Scholar with Thayer and later conducted a senior project that involved qualitative interviews with 25 women to assess how women make decisions regarding Non-invasive prenatal testing. The results of her work were published as a peer-reviewed manuscript co-authored with Thayer in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

Andie Conching ’19: As a neuroscience major and Native Hawaiian student, Andie was interested in understanding the biological pathways through which historical trauma could influence health disparities among indigenous communities. Many terms of independent studies ultimately resulted in the production of a manuscript published by Social Science and Medicine on this topic co-authored with Thayer.

Kaija Stern ’19: Kaija worked with Thayer on an independent study to evaluate how early life depression could influence later life health. Using data from the AddHealth study, Kaija and Thayer co-authored a paper in Annals of Human Biology that demonstrated a dose-response relationship between adversity experience and depression symptoms in early adulthood.

Alex Hawley ’19: Alex was a Mellon Mays Fellow and for her senior project interviewed women in the Northern border of the Navajo Nation reservation to understand their perspectives and experience in childbirth.

Adam Couitt ’19: Adam worked as a research assistant for Thayer helping with the analysis and interpretation of heart rate variability data.

Laura Francisco ’22 and Veronica Shea ’22: Laura and Veronica worked with Thayer as Women in Science Project (WISP) interns during their freshmen year. Together they designed a heart rate variability project assessing the impacts of juul-smoking on HRV and presented the results of their study in a poster presentation at the Karen E. Wetterhahn Science Symposium.