Dr. Nicole (Nicki) Bush is a Distinguished Professor in the UCSF department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and The Department of Pediatrics. She is the Division Chief of the Division of Developmental Medicine. She is the Co-Scientific Director of the CANDLE study (Urban Child Institute; NIH) the PI of the SEED prenatal programming study (R01), the UCSF PI of the TIDES multi-site prenatal programming study (R01), the PI of the PAWS-Genetics Substudy (RWJF), the PI of the CTRP-HEALTH Trauma and Biomarkers study (CTSI; RWJF), an M-PI on the NIH-ECHO PATHWAYS study and the NIH ECHO CANDLE study.
Dr. Bush’s research focuses on the manner in which early social contexts interface with individual differences to affect developmental trajectories across the life course. She examines how socioeconomic, parental, and environmental risks for maladaptive behavior and developmental psychopathology are modulated by individual differences in children’s temperamental, neurobiological, and genetic reactivity to stress. She also investigates the ways in which contextual experiences of adversity become biologically embedded by changing children’s developing physiologic systems and epigenetic processes, thereby shaping individual differences that mediate and moderate the effects of context on trajectories of development, mental and physical health.
Her research has has expanded to include the preconception and prenatal periods as sensitive periods for maternal and child exposure to the social environment. Her work integrates insights from social epidemiology, sociology, clinical psychology, and developmental psychobiology to elucidate the interplay of biology and context in youth development, as physiological systems mature and social environments change. Her examinations prioritize solution-oriented questions, including tests of interventions, to clarify the etiology and necessary solutions to promote children’s mental and physical health and subsequent adult health.
For more information on Dr. Nicki Bush, including her grants and publications, please visit her UCSF profile here.