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Understanding how our lived experiences influence long-term health is at the center of groundbreaking research led by Man-Kit (Karlo) Lei, an Affiliate of the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research (OIBR), Associate Professor of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Center on Biological Embedding of Social Events and Relationships.

Lei’s current project, Understanding Stress, Resilience, and Health across Life Course, is supported by $4.5 million in funding from agencies including the National Institute on Aging and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as by the Mental Research Institute Foundation, reflecting the national significance of this work.

A Longstanding Collaboration Driving Innovation

This research builds on more than 15 years of collaboration between Lei and Steven Beach, Regents’ Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Family Research. What began as a shared interest has evolved into a highly interdisciplinary effort, bringing together scholars across the University of Georgia campus and beyond to tackle complex questions at the intersection of social and biological science.

When Inequality Gets “Under the Skin”

At the heart of Lei’s research is a powerful concept: social experiences—particularly stress, inequality, and adversity—can become biologically embedded over time.

His research project examines how these factors influence health, aging, and neurodegenerative risk, with a particular focus on Black communities. By combining social data with biological indicators, Lei and his team are revealing how disadvantages build over time and become embedded in the body across the life course.

Importantly, the research also highlights the role of resilience. Supportive relationships, strong social networks, and targeted interventions can interrupt harmful pathways and promote better long-term health outcomes.

New Insights into Early Neurodegenerative Risk

Recent studies led by Lei provide some of the clearest evidence to date linking social adversity to early biological indicators of neurodegeneration.

In work published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A, his team found that cumulative socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with increases in a blood-based marker of nerve cell damage over time. Notably, these effects were not immediately visible but emerged gradually, underscoring how disadvantage accumulates and affects health across years.

A complementary study in The Journals of Gerontology, Series B, focused on Black women and revealed that experiences of racial discrimination accelerated age-related increases in the same biomarker, with effects becoming especially pronounced later in midlife. These findings align with the “weathering” perspective, which suggests that repeated exposure to adversity leads to cumulative biological wear and tear.

Together, this body of work demonstrates that inequality is not only social or psychological—it can also shape biological pathways linked to cognitive decline long before clinical symptoms appear.

Challenges—and Opportunities—in Interdisciplinary Research

Studying the intersection of social and biological processes presents unique challenges. Collecting both survey data and biological samples can increase participant burden, leading to higher attrition rates. Additionally, distinguishing the effects of social factors from natural biological variation requires sophisticated methodological approaches.

Despite these hurdles, Lei finds the work deeply rewarding. By shifting the focus from treating disease to preventing it, his research offers a more proactive approach to public health. It also provides critical insights into how building a more equitable society—and strengthening social support can improve population health and promote healthier aging.

Looking Ahead

Over the next five years, Lei aims to expand this research by increasing focus on neurodegenerative disorders and adopting a more comprehensive, multilevel approach. This includes examining how adversity operates at both individual and community levels and extending the research to additional populations to better understand both shared and unique pathways linking social experiences to health outcomes.

A Broader Perspective on Health

Lei’s work reinforces a critical takeaway: health cannot be understood through biology alone.

“Our bodies are biological entities,” he emphasizes, “but they are also carriers of social experience.”

By bridging social and biological sciences, this research advances a more complete understanding of the human condition—one that recognizes the profound impact of our environments, relationships, and lived experiences on long-term health.

Written by: Andrea Horsman
April 6, 2026

For millions of people in the United States, contact with the criminal legal system does not end when a sentence is imposed. Instead, it often continues through monetary sanctions—court-ordered fines, fees, and legal financial obligations that can shape individuals’ lives long after formal supervision ends. Despite their prevalence, these sanctions remained surprisingly understudied for decades.

Over nearly a decade, Sarah Shannon, associate professor of Sociology at the University of Georgia and an Owens Institute for Behavioral Research Distinguished Scholar, has been part of a national research effort that fundamentally reshaped how scholars and policymakers understand monetary sanctions and their consequences.

A National Collaboration with a Southern Lens
Shannon’s involvement began in 2015 with the Multi-State Study of Monetary Sanctions, a large-scale, mixed-methods project funded by Arnold Ventures. The original proposal included seven states, but the state of Georgia was later included to strengthen the study’s geographic and political scope. A colleague recommended Shannon, whose expertise and location made Georgia a strong fit.

That initial collaboration continued into a second project, the Monetary Sanctions Collective, which expanded the research beyond individual states to examine broader social, economic, and community-level impacts. Across both projects, the research spanned roughly 2015 to 2023, creating one of the most comprehensive bodies of work on monetary sanctions in the United States.

Why Monetary Sanctions Matter
Monetary sanctions—often referred to as legal financial obligations (LFOs) or “fines and fees”—are a widespread but frequently overlooked component of the criminal legal system. They function simultaneously as punishment, a source of government revenue, and a mechanism that can extend criminal supervision long after a case is otherwise resolved.

Findings from the multi-state research show that these sanctions impose significant financial burdens on millions of people, disproportionately affecting Black and Latinx individuals. Rather than promoting accountability, fines and fees often trap people in cycles of debt, poverty, and continued justice system involvement. Families and communities absorb these costs as well, while courts and related institutions can become distorted by reliance on monetary extraction.

What distinguished the first project was its scope and depth. Spanning eight states over five years, the study examined laws, court practices, administrative data, and lived experiences. By integrating legal analysis, quantitative data, and in-depth interviews, the research offered the most comprehensive picture to date of how monetary sanctions are structured, imposed, and experienced—and how they reproduce inequality across the United States.

The second project, the Monetary Sanctions Collective, broadened that lens further. In addition to documenting harm, the team focused on identifying pathways for reform. This phase of the research examined promising interventions, the experiences of people who owe both criminal justice debt and child support (“dual debtors”), the role of monetary sanctions in generating community-level poverty, and alternatives to restitution for youth in juvenile courts.

Making Research Accessible
The first project culminated in a double issue of the open-access Russell Sage Foundation: Journal of the Social Sciences (Volume 8, Issues 1and 2), making the findings widely available to scholars, policymakers, advocates, and community members. Publications from the second project are still forthcoming, but early results from Shannon’s work have appeared in Socius, continuing the commitment to accessible, policy-relevant scholarship.

Training the Next Generation of Researchers
An important—and especially meaningful—dimension of the monetary sanctions research has been student mentorship. Because the projects involved multiple forms of data collection and analysis, Shannon was able to engage teams of graduate and undergraduate students at UGA as research mentees. Shannon noted, “This collaborative, team-based approach to research has been one of the most rewarding aspects of the work.”

Looking Ahead
Shannon’s research agenda continues to evolve in interdisciplinary and public-facing directions. She is currently working on a grant-funded study of the Georgia Department of Community Supervision’s person-centered model of supervision, in collaboration with colleagues in UGA’s School of Social Work and the Ralston Institute for Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities. The project includes analysis of administrative case files, video-recorded interactions between probation officers and people under supervision, and field visits to community supervision offices across the state.

She is also collaborating with a colleague in UGA’s History Department on a public-facing scholarly project using the Guthrie v. Evans (1972–1985) collection at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies. The project examines prison revolt and reform litigation in the 1970s and explores how those histories inform contemporary debates about prison conditions and reform. Planned outputs include a documentary-style podcast and multimedia website aimed at reaching national—and potentially international—audiences, with future external funding applications likely to foundations or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Research with Purpose
Across her work, Shannon brings a consistent commitment to research that matters. Drawing on a career in nonprofit work before entering academia, she approaches scholarship as both a means of generating new knowledge and a way to inform policy and practice that directly affect people’s lives.

Written by: Andrea Horsman
February 4, 2026

 

Rethinking How Academia Confronts Harassment

For close to 20 years, Justine Tinkler, professor of sociology and an OIBR Distinguished Scholar at the University of Georgia, has examined how organizations respond to harassment—and why many well-intentioned policies fail to produce meaningful change. Her most recent project, “New Strategies to Combat Harassment in Engineering,” moves beyond documenting the limits of policy to testing solutions that can transform academic culture from within.

Funded by the National Science Foundation with a $1.2 million award, the five-year project (2020–2025) focuses on colleges of engineering, where concerns about harassment, power dynamics, and inclusion are especially heightened. Rather than relying on traditional compliance-driven training models, the research asks a different question: What happens when faculty are empowered to become agents of change?

From Policy Critique to Policy Solutions

Tinkler’s path to this project reflects a long-standing commitment to understanding both the promise and the unintended consequences of harassment law and policy. Her dissertation examined reactions to the enforcement of sexual harassment law, and her subsequent scholarship revealed that formal policies—while necessary—can sometimes provoke resistance or fail to shift everyday behavior.

That realization prompted a pivotal turn in her work. Alongside Mala Htun, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico, Tinkler previously evaluated a mandatory sexual misconduct training program at a large public research university. When the results showed limited effectiveness, the two scholars began imagining an alternative approach—one that emphasized engagement rather than compliance. Their collaboration eventually expanded to include Sharyn Potter, a professor at the University of New Hampshire and a leading expert on bystander intervention strategies, laying the groundwork for the NSF-funded project.

Mobilizing Faculty as Change Agents

At the heart of the project is an intervention inspired by sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev’s “managerial engagement” approach to organizational change. Drawing on decades of research across hundreds of U.S. corporations, this framework challenges the assumption that diversity and inclusion problems can be solved through control, blame, or one-off trainings. Instead, it emphasizes empowering leaders, involving them in solution-building, and holding them accountable for outcomes.

Applying these insights to STEM academia, Tinkler and her collaborators designed an intervention that trained faculty members to deliver a prosocial bystander curriculum directly to students in their own courses. Over four years, the research team collected extensive observational and interview data from both faculty and students, documenting how this hands-on approach reshaped understanding, confidence, and readiness to intervene.

Evidence That Engagement Matters

A 2025 paper published in Socius provides the clearest evidence to date of the intervention’s effectiveness. Faculty who facilitated the curriculum reported deeper engagement with the material as they prepared lessons, shared personal experiences, and conveyed the value of bystander action to their students. These activities increased accountability and expanded faculty members’ definitions of what it means to be a bystander—moving beyond immediate confrontation to include a broader range of prosocial actions.

Importantly, the study also found that leading an intervention mattered more than simply attending training. Interviews and a small, randomized experiment showed that faculty who facilitated activities demonstrated greater readiness to act than those who only participated as trainees. In a time when universities face increasing pressure to eliminate or scale back programs associated with civil rights compliance, the findings offer a promising pathway for building bystander readiness in environments where both the risks of intervening—and the costs of not intervening—are rising.

Paradoxes and Challenges of Research

Reflecting on her research, Tinkler states,” My research continually surprises me. I am particularly intrigued by the paradoxes that underlie most people’s orientations to inequality in the U.S. On the one hand, most people believe race, gender, and class equality is worth striving for, but on the other hand, many people across the political spectrum resist the enforcement of policies and laws designed to reduce inequality. The roots of this resistance are varied and often unexpected.”

The most challenging aspect of her research, she says, is moving from problem identification to solution-building. Highlighting social problems is often more straightforward than demonstrating how to address them effectively, especially when findings are complex or counterintuitive. Yet this challenge also underscores what motivates her work: contributing knowledge that can genuinely make the world a better place.

Looking Ahead

Over the next five years, Tinkler hopes to extend her work on harassment in an ambitious new direction: developing the first nationally representative, longitudinal survey of people’s experiences with sexual harassment. Currently under revision for submission to the National Institutes of Health, the project would provide an unprecedented data resource for understanding how harassment unfolds over time—and how interventions might interrupt it.

In parallel, she continues her work as co-director of the Laboratories for the Study of Social Interaction (LaSSI), an experimental research lab at UGA that examines socio-emotional processes, justice, and identity at both individual and group levels.

Together, these efforts reflect a career-long commitment not only to understanding inequality—but to testing strategies that can move institutions closer to the change they aspire to achieve.

 

Written by: Andrea Horsman
January 12, 2026

 

How does a teenager’s stress ripple through the family—beyond the emotional tension—to affect their parents’ physical health?

That’s the central question driving a newly funded research project led by University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill’s Dr. Melissa Lippold, in collaboration with Dr. Katherine Ehrlich, University of Georgia Professor of Psychology and a Distinguished Scholar at the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research, whose Health and Development Laboratory will spearhead the UGA portion of the work.

The five-year, $3.3 million study, titled “Examining the Crossover Effects of Adolescent Stress on Parent Cardiovascular Health,” is supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), with $2.4 million awarded to UGA. The project launched in September 2025 and will follow 400 parent–child pairs across Athens and surrounding areas starting this spring.

A Friendship Turned Research Partnership

Ehrlich and Lippold’s collaboration began as many great scientific partnerships do—with a shared interest and a wonderful idea.

“I had been working on a proposal about how adolescents’ stress during the transition to middle and high school might be linked to their own cardiometabolic health,” Ehrlich said. “But we kept missing the payline—sometimes by just a couple of points.”

Lippold suggested expanding the idea to include “crossover effects”—how stress in adolescents might transfer to affect parents’ health. “We quickly realized we could examine both sets of questions within the same framework,” Ehrlich recalled. “That insight turned out to be the key.”

The two researchers first met in 2005 during graduate school interviews and have been sharing ideas ever since. “We’ve been informally bouncing ideas off each other for nearly two decades,” Ehrlich said. “It’s been amazing to see how that long-term friendship evolved into a project of this scale.”

Inside the Study: Tracking Stress and Health in Real Time

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., disproportionately affecting minority and low-income populations. Decades of evidence show that daily stressors and strong emotional reactivity to those stressors elevate risks for cardiometabolic disease and inflammation—two major predictors of CVD.

What’s new is the project’s focus on how adolescent stress might “crossover” to influence parent health. Early pilot data from Lippold’s lab revealed that, on days when adolescents experienced stressors, their parents were more likely to report negative mood, physical symptoms such as headaches or fatigue, and elevated cortisol—a stress hormone linked to heart disease.

The new study will dig deeper into those patterns. Over the next five years, the team will:

• Recruit 400 families with children entering 6th or 9th grade.
• Conduct in-lab assessments of stress, social relationships, and baseline health.
• Have parents and adolescents complete two weeks of nightly surveys to capture daily stressors and emotional responses.
• Follow each family for 18 months to see how adolescent stress predicts changes in parent cardiovascular health and inflammatory markers.

By combining new primary data with analyses of an existing parent-child dataset, the research will test whether findings hold across different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups—providing a rare opportunity to examine health disparities in stress transmission.

Why It Matters

Parenting adolescents can be both rewarding and stressful. This project aims to uncover how those daily stressors matter for parents’ physical health and identify modifiable pathways—such as poor sleep, worry, or strained family communication—that might amplify or buffer those effects.

Ultimately, the findings will guide the design of future interventions to help parents respond to teen stress in ways that protect their own cardiovascular health. “If we can pinpoint the mechanisms linking adolescent stress to parent health, we can design strategies that promote resilience in both generations,” Ehrlich explained.

The Human Side of Science

For Ehrlich, the project reflects the unpredictable but rewarding path of research. “Research trajectories often look linear in hindsight,” she said, “but in reality, they’re shaped by timing, collaboration, and a fair amount of luck. This grant is a perfect example—it started as a companion idea and became the centerpiece of our next five years.”

She also praised the Owens Institute for Behavioral Research and UGA’s Center for Family Research for their support. “The OIBR team was incredible, especially during those chaotic submission cycles when I had two or three proposals going at once,” she said.

And while the work is challenging—tracking participants over years, managing complex data systems—Ehrlich finds joy in the teamwork behind it all. “When everything is running smoothly—data coming in, students learning, analyses progressing—it feels like we’re all part of something bigger. That’s what I love most about this work.”

Learn More

Families interested in participating or following the project’s progress can visit the Health and Development Laboratory website: https://www.healthanddevelopmentlaboratory.com

Written by: Andrea Horsman
November 13, 2025