1. What initially drew you to studying the social life and health of primates?

I am fascinated by the importance of social relationships in our lives—friendly, antagonistic, or some mixture of both—and so have always gravitated towards work that seeks to understand social interactions.

Early in college, I took a course in evolutionary anthropology that introduced primate studies—particularly long-term field studies, where individuals could be followed from birth to death—as a method to get at these questions. It taught me that social behaviors could not only be measured, but their origins understood within the well-developed framework of evolutionary thinking—which in turn is directly connected to their consequences for health, survival, and reproduction.

2. What are some of the most important findings from your work? Has anything surprised you?

Our work has repeatedly revealed that analogues of the major social determinants of health in humans—early life adversity, social isolation, low social status—are also extraordinarily powerful predictors of life outcomes in other primates, including in unmanipulated natural populations. For example, we find that social isolation predicts 2–3 years of shortened adult lifespan in wild female baboons; early life adversity can shorten lifespan by up to a decade.

In one sense, these very large effects should perhaps not be surprising. After all, humans share millions of years of evolutionary history and a lot of physiological similarities with other primates. But there is always a question about whether the human case is qualitatively different—because of our complex modern societies, or our cognitive sophistication, or something else. So, I’ve been a little surprised nonetheless—in part pleasantly so, in the sense that these parallels create valuable opportunities to study nonhuman primates (and other social mammals) to understand behavioral and social factors that influence health in humans.

3. How can we apply the insights from your research to improve human health and influence human behavior?

One of the difficult questions about the social determinants of health in humans, I think, is the causality question: can social factors per se really influence how our bodies function, or is it all confounded by health care access, diet, toxin exposure, etc.? I think some of the important takeaways from our work for human health is where we show—this is most clearly done in our experimental studies—that controlled changes to the social environment by themselves have downstream consequences for social behavior, stress physiology, and even the regulation of the cells in our immune system and the response to vaccines.

In our studies in wild primates, we show how social and early life adversity can have long-term consequences in the next generation and suggest a simple explanation based on the lasting effects of early adversity on maternal condition. Both types of studies don’t immediately test interventions, but they help with the work of identifying the levers that might be most important to pull.

4. What were some key decision points in your career? What factors went into the choices you eventually made?

A very important decision point was choosing to work with my former thesis advisor and now long-standing collaborator, Susan Alberts. By doing so, I not only got fantastic training and mentorship, but also the opportunity to start working with the Amboseli Baboon Research Project (ABRP), one of the longest-running field sites on wild primates in the world. The life course data available for ABRP spans up to nine or ten generations now, based on granular, near-daily observations: it is a treasure trove for understanding how and why social interactions influence life outcomes, and for biodemographic studies in general. My close collaborations with Susan and my other ABRP co-directors, Jeanne Altmann and Beth Archie, have also been tremendously personally and professionally rewarding.

A second important decision point was starting my faculty job at Duke through an interdisciplinary hire led by the Duke Population Research Institute (DUPRI). Most members of DUPRI are social scientists, but we share interests in life course studies, biodemography, and the social determinants of health. My colleagues there, especially Angie O’Rand and Seth Sanders, and also Kathie Mullan Harris at UNC’s Carolina Population Center, helped introduce me to entirely new ideas, data sets, and ways of thinking about these topics, which have been very valuable in developing my research program over the years.

5. What challenges have you faced in your training and career? How have you addressed and perhaps grown from them?

In general, I have felt very fortunate in my training and career: I had wonderful mentors and colleagues during my training experience, and they form a part of my extended scientific and personal network today. A challenge that’s on my mind a lot these days is the difficulty, though, of being far from my support network, especially my immediate family.

My research reminds me a lot about the importance of social support, but in academics, moving around and following your career, traveling a lot, means that there’s often just not a lot of net to catch you. And this job, as stimulating and wonderful as it is, means that there’s always a long to-do list, people you want to support, obligations to meet. It’s easy to convince myself that there’s no room for slack. But I suppose one thing I can say I’ve learned is that, when you needed to ask for it—people are often more understanding than you might fear.

6. Any words of advice you have for trainees seeking a career in science?

Find collaborators you love working with and hold on to them—they will enrich your life scientifically and personally in a unique and special way. Everyone needs people they trust to whom they can ask “dumb questions.”

Don’t accidentally trap yourself into disciplinary silos. Talk to anyone, regardless of discipline, who is interested in talking to you. Sometimes it’s just a one-off conversation, but sometimes it makes a new connection or opens a new research direction.