Catherine Panter-Brick

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• DPhil, Oxon; Msc, Biological Anthropology; MA, Human Sciences
• Professor at Yale University

This article examines how notions of solidarity, social justice, and faith guide humanitarian work at the U.S.-Mexico border. Based on interviews and participant observation in three regions, it examines the narratives of lay and religious actors serving migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, to understand the moral and political resonance of thei...

Experiencing childhood adversity has been associated with significant changes in inflammation, cell-mediated immunocompetence, and cortisol secretion. Relatively few studies have examined, longitudinally, alterations to inflammatory processes during adolescence, especially outside Western contexts; none have evaluated biomarker trajectories for at-...

Major knowledge gaps remain concerning the most effective ways to address mental health and psychosocial needs of populations affected by humanitarian crises. The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crisis (R2HC) program aims to strengthen humanitarian health practice and policy through research. As a significant portion of R2HC’s research has focu...

Background: Evidence of 'what works' in humanitarian programming is important for addressing the disruptive consequences of conflict and forced displacement. However, collecting robust scientific evidence, and ensuring contextual relevance, is challenging. We measured the biological, psychosocial, and cognitive impacts of a structured psychosocial...

The impacts of war and displacement on executive function (EF)—what we might call the cognitive signatures of minds under siege—are little known. We surveyed a gender‐balanced sample of 12‐ to 18‐year‐old Syrian refugees (n = 240) and Jordanian non‐refugees (n = 210) living in Jordan. We examined the relative contributions of poverty, trauma exposu...

Short Videobyte featuring Review of evidence on the mental health of forcibly-displaced children.

Close to 50 million children under 18 years of age are currently forcibly displaced from their homes because of armed conflict and other emergencies. Displaced children and adolescents are at increased risk of developing poor mental health. However, knowledge about how best to support their mental health and well-being is limited. In this Review, w...

Maternal trauma influences infant and adult health outcomes and may impact future generations through epigenetic modifications such as DNA methylation (DNAm). Research in humans on the intergenerational epigenetic transmission of trauma effects is limited. In this study, we assessed DNAm signatures of war-related violence by comparing germline, pre...

Description of our paper: Mulligan CJ, Quinn EB, Hamadmad D, DuttonCL, Nevell L, Binder AM, Panter-Brick C, Dajani R. (2025). Epigenetic signatures of intergenerational exposure to violence in three generations of Syrian refugees. Scientific Reports 15, 5945. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-89818-z

Introduction Cross-cultural research measuring how women perceive their sense of agency and catalyze social innovation has been limited. We conducted a mixed-methods study to learn about women’s agency and life satisfaction, while evaluating the perceived benefits of a social innovation program ( We Love Reading ), in the UAE which, in 2022, launch...

Introduction Interpersonal violence against women is a major global health problem that may have intergenerational effects. This study investigated associations between maternal experiences of interpersonal violence and other traumatic events and maternal and infant salivary diurnal cortisol in a cohort of adolescent mothers in São Paulo, Brazil....

Purpose To assess gender differences in COVID-19 related changes in home and work responsibilities longitudinally, and determine whether these differences, together with other potential risk and protective factors, are associated with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology. Method Symptoms of depression, anxi...

Public discourse is rich in meaning, reflecting consensus, dissent, and change. Yet, very little public discourse on the humanitarian sector has been authored by aid workers themselves. We conducted a thematic analysis of the ‘Secret Aid Worker’ (SAW) series, published in The Guardian newspaper between 2015 and 2018, the only corpus of data on huma...

This pilot randomized controlled trial protocol aims to (1) assess the impact on the wellbeing of Syrian refugee young adults (18–24 years) of being a community mental health worker (CMHW) implementing WHO's evidence-based psychosocial intervention - Problem Management Plus (PM+) - with adults in their community, and (2) identify the mechanisms ass...

Introduction Volunteering in the community is thought to provide unique benefits to people who experience limited engagement in society. In the global South, volunteer programs are often framed as empowering women and benefiting the poor, without empirical evidence or systematic investigation of what this means from a local perspective. For this re...

There are now 108.4 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, many of whom endure adversities that result in trauma, toxic stress, and potentially, altered epigenetic development. This paper provides a comprehensive review of current literature on the biological signatures of war and forced migration among refugee populations. To consolidate evi...

In refugee contexts, relatively little is known about men’s child- and family-directed behaviours and even less about the impacts of father involvement. We examine father and mother reports of levels of father involvement, and their associations with family functioning and child development during forced displacement. In 2021–22, we prospectively c...

In refugee contexts, relatively little is known about men"s child-and family-directed behaviors and even less about the impacts of father involvement. We examine father and mother reports of levels of father involvement, and their associations with family functioning and child development during forced displacement. In 2021-22, we prospectively col...

Policy Brief published by the Jackson School of Global Affairs

Policy Brief published by the Jackson School of Global Affairs.

Policy Report published by the Jackson School of Global Affairs

Hadfield et al. “Father involvement and child development: A prospective study of Syrian refugee families.” Journal of Child and Family Studies (2024) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH6PgQRlhKw&ab_channel=AJEVideoBytes

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, the global population was exposed to a significant psychological distress, however, subgroups of vulnerable individuals proved resilient throughout the pandemic. This study aims to identify predictors of long-term, sustained resilience among people with a history of mental disorder during the first two years...

Background Higher social support protects people from developing mental disorders. Limited evidence is available on the mechanism through which social support plays this protective role. Objective To investigate the stress-buffering process of social support on depressive symptoms using a novel longitudinal dynamic symptom network approach. Metho...

Research on coparenting is virtually absent from the refugee literature, despite its importance for family systems, children’s bio-behavioural and emotional development, and intergenerational responses to social change. In 2022, we conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with Syrian refugees in Jordan and used thematic analysis to examine how fathe...

This paper examines the added-value that multisystem approaches bring to research and intervention in contexts of war and forced displacement. I highlight what is useful and truly innovative about systems-level work, aware that providing data-related evidence is only part of the story when connecting research to policy and practice. I discuss four...

Background: Four decades of war, political upheaval, economic deprivation and forced displacement have profoundly affected both in-country and refugee Afghan populations. Aims: We reviewed literature on mental health and psychosocial well-being, to assess the current evidence and describe mental healthcare systems, including government programme...

In response to large-scale refugee crises, frameworks for development assistance have promoted women's empowerment, wellbeing, and social inclusion. A productive research agenda lies in analyzing social networks: it is unknown how women structure their social ties within refugee and host communities , and whether social networks matter for their se...

The International Colloquium ‘Strategies for Sustainable Peacebuilding’ was convened by Professor Catherine Panter-Brick and Ambassador (retired) Bisa Williams. This Policy Brief crystallizes new ideas in the field of peacebuilding.

We describe an effort to develop a consensus-based research agenda for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions in humanitarian settings for 2021-30. By engaging a broad group of stakeholders, we generated research questions through a qualitative study (in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Uganda; n=101), consultations led by humanitarian...

Maternal prenatal psychosocial stress is associated with adverse hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPAA) function among infants. Although the biological mechanisms influencing this process remain unknown, altered DNA methylation is considered to be one potential mechanism. We investigated associations between maternal prenatal psychological dist...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY • Fathers are agents of change, influencing family dynamics, wellbeing, and collective social action across generations. • Concrete examples of community-level interventions demonstrate that fathers matter for raising children with a disposition for peace and social inclusion. • Engaging with men as fathers is important for sustai...

Objectives:Maternal prenatal psychosocial stress is associated with adverse hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function among infants. While the biological mechanisms influencing this process remain unknown, altered DNA methylation is considered to be one potential mechanism. We investigated associations between maternal prenatal psychological dis...

Backgrounds Individuals with chronic medical conditions are considered highly exposed to COVID-19 pandemic stress, but emerging evidence is demonstrating that resilience is common even among them. We aimed at identifying sustained resilient outcomes and their predictors in chronically ill people during the first year of the pandemic. Methods This...

On the ground, how can research initiatives unfold to make meaningful contributions to real‐world practice and real‐time policy? This article draws on a case study evaluating an innovative program to alleviate toxic stress, boost resilience, and promote social inclusion among Syrian refugee and Jordanian nonrefugee youth. I describe the kind of pro...

Responses to early life adversity differ greatly across individuals. Elucidating which factors underlie this variation can help us better understand how to improve health trajectories. Here we used a case:control study of refugee and non-refugee youth, differentially exposed to war-related trauma, to investigate the effects of genetics and psychoso...

Children's environments - especially relationships with caregivers - sculpt not only developing brains but also multiple bio-behavioral systems that influence long-term cognitive and socioemotional outcomes, including the ability to empathize with others and interact in prosocial and peaceful ways. This speaks to the importance of investing resourc...

Humanitarian research with Syrian refugees can be difficult to conduct in-person, due to COVID-19 containment, security, and logistics issues. We assessed whether the online implementation of a brief, culturally grounded resilience measure would yield reliable responses for use with children and adolescents in the Middle East region. We implemented...

How do we build the foundations for more resilient social, economic, and political systems and link individual with collective resilience to sustain change across generations? These are pressing questions in the fields of resilience humanitarianism and peacebuilding, fields that seek transformative, sustainable changes to achieve ambitious goals af...

Multisystemic Resilience brings together for the first time in one volume a wide range of resilience experts. By placing side-by-side the writing of psychologists, epigeneticists, ecologists, architects, disaster specialists, engineers, sociologists and public health researchers (to name just a few of the disciplines represented), this innovative v...

Why do humans heal one another? Evolutionary psychology has advanced our understanding of why humans suffer psychological distress and mental illness. However, to date, the evolutionary origins of what drives humans to alleviate the suffering of others has received limited attention. Therefore, we draw upon evolutionary theory to assess why humans...

Objectives Oxidative stress is hypothesized to contribute to age‐related somatic deterioration. Both reproductive and ecological context may necessitate tradeoffs that influence this outcome. We examined whether measures of lifetime reproductive effort were related to levels of oxidative stress biomarkers in peri‐ and post‐menopausal women and whet...

Purpose: In situations of adversity, young people draw on individual, relational, and contextual (community and cultural) resources to foster their resilience. Recent literature defines resilience as a capacity that is underpinned by a network of interrelated resources. Although empirical studies show evidence of the value of a network approach, l...

Being deployed in crisis zones is perilous business. To‐date, little is known regarding how humanitarian workers relate social and professional goals to lived experiences of high‐risk environments. In South Sudan, ranked as the most dangerous country for aid workers globally, we interviewed international humanitarian staff (n=20) to examine, using...

Pakistani workers who deliver humanitarian aid in the borderlands with Afghanistan live daily with the threat of targeted killings, kidnappings, and other violent attacks. However, their work also provides them with a sense of meaning and an opportunity to provide for their families. Based on interviews and group discussions with humanitarians empl...

The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that early childhood stressors disproportionately impact adult health. Numerous studies have found adult mental health to be associated with childhood adversities and genetic variants, particularly in genes related to neurochemistry. However, few studies have examined the way...

Early childhood trauma can have profound and lifelong effects on adult mental health and psychosocial wellbeing. Nevertheless, responses to trauma are highly variable. Genetic variants may help explain variation in responses to trauma by identifying alleles that associate with changes in mental health measures. Protective factors, such as resilienc...

The developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis posits that early childhood stressors disproportionately impact adult health. Numerous studies have found adult mental health to be associated with childhood adversities and genetic variants, particularly in genes related to neurochemistry. However, few studies have examined the way...

Experiencing childhood adversity has been associated with significant changes in inflammation, cell-mediated immunocompetence, and cortisol secretion. Relatively few studies have examined, longitudinally, alterations to inflammatory processes during adolescence, especially outside Western contexts; none have evaluated biomarker trajectories for at-...

Anthropologists have made forceful contributions to knowledge on violence and its impact on human wellbeing. They have widened the World Health Organization's threefold typology of violence, with analyses that highlight structural and political violence, insidious forms of everyday violence that engender suffering, and the machinery of war. They ha...

Partnerships; Community engagements; Research ethics

Table S1. Correlations and internal consistency for baseline study variables and 7‐day test–retest reliability with a separate sample. Table S2. Baseline (T1) characteristics of youth lost versus retained to study.

Appendix S1. CONSORT Checklist.

Figure S1. Symptom scores at three time‐points for cycle‐specific and pooled‐cycle data for Advancing Adolescents. Significance levels are for differences across time, within treatment and within control groups.

Temporal examinations of the biological signature of stress or trauma in war-affected populations are seldom undertaken. Moreover, few studies have examined whether stress biomarkers track biological sensitivity to brief interventions targeting the improvement of psychosocial wellbeing. Our study is the first to prospectively examine, in war-affect...

Table S1. Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM‐12)

Table S2. Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM‐28)

Background: Strengthening the evidence base for humanitarian interventions that provide psychosocial support to war-affected youth is a key priority. We tested the impacts of an 8-week programme of structured activities informed by a profound stress attunement (PSA) framework (Advancing Adolescents), delivered in group-format to 12-18 year-olds in...

Conceptually and methodologically, medical anthropology is well-positioned to support a "big-tent" research agenda on health and society. It fosters approaches to social and structural models of health and wellbeing in ways that are critically reflective, cross-cultural, people-centered, and transdisciplinary. In this review article, we showcase th...

Validated measures are needed for assessing resilience in conflict settings. An Arabic version of the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM) was developed and tested in Jordan. Following qualitative work, surveys were implemented with male/female, refugee/nonrefugee samples (N = 603, 11–18 years). Confirmatory fac- tor analyses tested three-fact...

Anthropology brings nuance and innovation to the field of Global Mental Health. It offers depth and breadth of knowledge regarding the drivers of mental health and psychosocial wellness, championing a fine-grained approach to culture, and insisting on critical analyses of social and moral contexts relevant to wellbeing. It offers insights that are...

Objectives: Biocultural research remains a challenge in the field of global mental health. We sought to test associations between blood pressure and idioms of distress in a population survey. Methods: We drew on a randomly selected sample of 991 adults (498 men, 493 women) in Afghanistan, for whom physiological and psychosocial data were systema...

Objective In the field of global mental health, there is a need for identifying core values and competencies to guide training programs in professional practice as well as in academia. This paper presents the results of interdisciplinary discussions fostered during an annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture to develop...

Culture and resilience prove to be slippery concepts unless deployed with care and attention. In this chapter, I demonstrate why a fine-grained approach to culture is important to the study of resilience, helping us avoid common pitfalls such as equating culture with society, religion, or ethnicity in ways that offer limited insights about people’s...

This chapter examines potential pathways to peace based on the biological and social underpinnings of child development. It assesses child development in the context of familial and group relations and examines its potential role in building pathways to peace. Early childhood education and family support programs can result in huge, long-term benef...

This chapter focuses on children’s capacity to create, maintain, and restore harmonious and equitable relationships with others. Obstacles and catalysts for healthy human development are identified, as are the competencies required for children to engage in harmonious and equitable relationships. Sustainable peace in a society requires a “systems a...

Experts investigate the role of child development in promoting a culture of peace, reporting on research in biology, neuroscience, genetics, and psychology. Can more peaceful childhoods promote a culture of peace? Increasing evidence from a broad range of disciplines shows that how we raise our children affects the propensity for conflict and the p...

Experts investigate the role of child development in promoting a culture of peace, reporting on research in biology, neuroscience, genetics, and psychology. Can more peaceful childhoods promote a culture of peace? Increasing evidence from a broad range of disciplines shows that how we raise our children affects the propensity for conflict and the p...

Background Studies of war-affected youth have not yet examined how trauma memories relate to prospective changes in mental health and to subjective or social experiences. Methods We interviewed a gender-balanced, randomly selected sample of Afghan child-caregiver dyads (n=331, two waves, 1year apart). We assessed lifetime trauma with a Traumatic Ev...

Risk and resilience research articulates major explanatory frameworks regarding the persistence of health disparities. Specifically, scholars have advocated a sophisticated knowledge of risk, a more grounded understanding of resilience, and comprehensive and meaningful measurements of risk and resilience pathways across cultures. The goal is to ope...

In this paper, inspired by the plenary panel at the 2013 meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Dr. Steven Southwick (chair) and multidisciplinary panelists Drs. George Bonanno, Ann Masten, Catherine Panter-Brick, and Rachel Yehuda tackle some of the most pressing current questions in the field of resilience research inc...

In recent years, anthropologists have become increasingly present in medical humanitarian situations as scholars, consultants, and humanitarian practitioners and have acquired insight into medical humanitarian policy and practice. In 2012, we implemented a poll on anthropology, health, and humanitarian practice in which 75 anthropologists discussed...