Kyle Bourassa, PhD's Career Development Award (CDA-2) grant submission was selected for funding by CSR&D at the VA. The grant is titled “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Accelerated Biological Aging, and Veteran Health “ and he will be studying biological aging and health outcomes for post-9/11 deployment Veterans with PTSD. Aging Center affiliated mentorship team members include Drs. Katherine Hall, Terrie Moffitt, and Greg Taylor.
Dr. Bourassa is currently an Advanced Fellow in the Geriatrics Research, Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) at the Durham VA Health Care System. He continues to collaborate with the Moffitt-Caspi Lab at Duke University and was previously funded by the National Institute on Aging through the Duke Aging Center's T32 Postdoctoral Research Training Program. Dr. Bourassa was the recipient of a 2021 George L. Maddox Aspiring Investigator Award.
His research focuses on understanding the impact of stressful life events—such as divorce, bereavement, and trauma—on health across the lifespan. His work examines the social, behavioral, and affective mechanisms that link the experience of these stressors with dysregulated cardiovascular physiology, relevant disease outcomes, and mortality. To do so, Kyle makes use of both longitudinal cohort study designs and lab-based experimental paradigms, integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches. In addition to his work examining mechanisms of action, Kyle also studies how behavioral interventions might improve health among people who experience stressful life events.
Congratulations to Kyle!