Farah Qureshi Successfully Defends Dissertation

April 3, 2019
Farah Qureshi.

Congratulations to Dr. Farah Qureshi, SD—Pedagogy Fellow at the Incubator and Global Health Pedagogy Fellow at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning—who successfully defended her dissertation, “Childhood Origins of Cardiometabolic Disease: Psychosocial Pathways of Risk and Resilience,” on March 26, 2019, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Qureshi’s research examines the connections between young people’s social environments, emotional well-being, and cardiometabolic health.

With her characteristic enthusiasm and clarity, Qureshi walked through the primary findings of her three papers. The current body of work that links social inequities and mental health to cardiovascular outcomes focuses on older populations. As a social epidemiologist, Qureshi was curious how adversity at earlier ages—where the research was still nascent—might shape children’s mental health and how long-term impacts of this stress might play out for outcomes like heart disease and stroke. Her dissertation papers, therefore, zoomed in on understanding risk and resilience in early childhood, tying together developmental and social psychology theories with population health and epidemiological analysis.

Qureshi’s committee included Dr. Laura Kubzansky (Chair), Dr. Michelle Williams, Dr. Karestan Koenen, and Dr. Henning Tiemier. After graduation, Farah will remain at the Harvard Chan School for a post-doctoral fellowship, continuing to explore the questions in her dissertation while also identifying positive resources that buffer children from the health effects of stress.

Please join the Incubator in congratulating Dr. Farah Qureshi on this major achievement!