Stress and Women’s Health Research Overview

As the second research pillar, Stress and Women’s Health Research focuses on how different types of stress impact women’s physical and mental health and are processed by the brain. This includes accumulated lifetime stressors, environmental stress, and physiological stress. Two signature Connors Center programs fall under this pillar: The Brigham/Harvard Center for Reproductive Outcomes of Stress and Aging (ROSA) that investigates neural processing of stress in postmenopausal women, and the Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Stress Program of Research (WHISPR) that examines the effect of stress on the health of women and convenes a community of stress investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.