Carol M. Worthman

Recognized for work demonstrating the impact of cultural practices on biological outcomes, including breastfeeding effects on infant survival and birth spacing, of child care on child survival and growth, of sex differentiated care on the timing of puberty, and reproductive life history on chronic health risk. Her later work focused on mental health outcomes, including pubertal bases for gender differences in adult rates of depression, interactions of endocrine with experiential factors in child behavior problems, and biomediation of long term consequences of early abuse and neglect. She conducted cross-cultural research in twelve countries, including Kenya, Tibet, Nepal, Egypt, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, and South Africa, and the United States. For over 20 years, she participated in the Great Smoky Mountains Study, a large, longitudinal, population-based developmental epidemiological project in western North Carolina. Most recently, she pioneered sleep research in anthropology and drew attention to the significance of substantial cross-cultural, social ecological sources of variation. She directs the neuroscience component of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative, a program that has introduced and now implements sustainable science education in the Tibetan monastic curriculum.