Hannah M. C. Schreier

• Social Science Research Institute co-funded faculty member

• Health disparities
• Early life adversity
• Inflammation
• Youth health

Hannah Schreier is interested in understanding how experiences during childhood and adolescence influence long-term disease risk, especially experiences such as growing up in poverty or being a victim of child maltreatment. In addition to understanding the long-term health consequences of such experiences, e.g., related to cardiovascular disease risk, Dr. Schreier is also aiming to understand 1) how psychosocial mechanisms within families and communities (e.g., parenting, the larger family environment) may protect youth from such experiences or, conversely, increase their vulnerability to suffering their negative consequences and 2) whether purely social interventions can be used to actively improve physiological markers of chronic disease risk among youth. Specifically, Dr. Schreier focuses primarily on how the above influences and experiences alter key metabolic and inflammatory outcomes that have been linked to long-term chronic disease risk. To this end, she runs her own wet lab where biological samples (including, e.g., saliva and blood samples) are processed and assayed.

Currently, major NIH-funded research projects in the lab include the following:

Early Psychosocial Intervention and Child and Parent Cardiovascular Disease Risk

NIH R01 HL 137809-01                Schreier (PI)               03/05/2018 – 12/31/2022

National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

This project builds on the Family Foundations (FF) intervention, an ongoing NICHD-funded (PI: Feinberg, HD058529) randomized controlled trial of a perinatal intervention focused on coparenting, to examine the psychosocial pathways within the family that influence child and parent cardiovascular disease risk. Additionally, potential intervention effects of FF on child and parent cardiovascular disease risk and the role of socioeconomic status in these associations will be examined.

Role: Principal Investigator

Penn State University’s Translational Center for Child Maltreatment Studies (TCCMS)

NIH P50 HD 089922-01               (PI: Noll)                      04/20/2017 – 03/31/2022

National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD)

The Translational Center for Child Maltreatment Studies (TCCMS) conducts high quality, high impact science, translates and packages this science into messages that resonate with community providers and policy makers, and traverses the Research-to-Policy Bridge by communicating these packages to legislative leaders. The TCCMS will be a key national resource for conducting and rapidly disseminating impactful new science that can change health and development trajectories for survivors, mobilize public investment in child maltreatment prevention and treatment, accelerate science to practice, spark dynamic system-wide solutions, and support and inspire future generations to do the same. Project 1 of this large center grant focuses specifically on understanding the biological embedding of child maltreatment.

Role: Co-Investigator

For additional information and opportunities for involvement, please also see Dr. Schreier’s lab website.

Dr. Schreier joined the Department of Biobehavioral Health in 2015. Prior to joining BBH, she completed her MA and PhD in health psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She greatly enjoys being part of such an interdisciplinary department and teaching both Research Methods (BBH 310) and Interdisciplinary Integration of Biobehavioral Health Research (BBH 311) to BBH undergrads.

In addition to being part of the BBH faculty, Dr. Schreier is also one of the 12 faculty members at Penn State who make up Penn State’s Child Maltreatment Solutions Network which is dedicated to the prevention, detection, and treatment of child maltreatment.