Anna Lau
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Psychology
Some students from disadvantaged communities succeed in school despite heavy adversity, and they are often praised as resilient. But resilience in academics may carry hidden costs.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
resilience
health disparities
BIPOC youth
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Test whether a tailored mindfulness program reduces emotion suppression, experiential avoidance and unmodulated perseverance among high-achieving, low-income Black, Latinx and Asian American students, compared with a study-skills control, in a 504-student randomized trial.
- Test the mindfulness program's effects at 12 months on allostatic load biomarkers (cortisol, blood pressure, body-mass index, body circumferences), health complaints, and depression and anxiety symptoms.
- Examine whether self-regulation strategies explain the link between a striving, persistent coping style and health and mental health problems, using data from the STRIVE trial.
More about the research
Earlier research suggests that Black, Indigenous and other youth of color who show a striving, persistent style of coping with adversity can later develop physical and mental health problems. The same self-control that drives achievement under chronic stress may also strain the body's stress systems. This strain, called allostatic load, may fuel health disparities, depression and anxiety. The self-control involved includes suppressing emotions, avoiding uncomfortable feelings and pushing on without pause.
Why it matters
High-achieving students of color from low-income backgrounds may pay a hidden price in physical and mental health for succeeding under adversity, and these problems are often missed. If the mindfulness program works, it could become a scalable school-based prevention approach. Such an approach could help reduce both health and mental health disparities among underserved youth.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Martha E Wadsworth
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Psychology
Test whether the BaSICS coping and empowerment program reduces depression, anxiety and suicidality in clinically referred low-income young adolescents, using a randomized trial across four central Pennsylvania sites.
Sara McDaniel
University of Alabama, AL·Education Research
Compare Coping Power with Coping Power+, which adds enhanced perspective-taking content, for reducing aggression and school disengagement among middle schoolers with high externalizing behavior in a randomized trial.
Stephanie Caligiuri
William & Mary, VA·Physiology
Test whether eating flaxseed muffins daily for six weeks lowers allostatic load in young adults, measured by cortisol, melatonin, BDNF, reactive oxygen species and mitochondrial activity, compared with control muffins in a double-blind trial.
The school
University of California-Los Angeles: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 803 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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