A D iscussion on an I ntegrative S ociety with P rofessor A mani N uru -J eter B S J Kuntal Chowdhary, Joshua Hernandez, Jessica Evaristo, Jingyan Wang, Ali Palla, Harshika Chowdhary, Mariko Nakamura, Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth, Rhea Misra Though the phrase “stress can kill you” is often used in jest, the broader implications of chronic stress are often overlooked. Chronic stress is the slow poison that kills from within. BSJ Interviews had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Amani Nuru-Jeter to understand the broader implications of the “wear and tear” of stress and explore the root causes of the issue. Professor Nuru-Jeter’s broad research interest is to integrate social, demographic, and epidemiologic methods to examine racial inequalities in health, as they exist across populations, across place, and over the life-course. Professor Nuru-Jeter is also Principal Investigator of the African American Women’s Heart and Health Study, which examines the association between racism stress, cardiovascular biomarkers, and biological stress among Black women in the Bay area with particular focus on coping mechanisms; and Co-Principal Investigator of the Bay Area Heart Health Study which examines similar associations among Black men with particular emphasis on coping mechanisms and internalized racism. BSJ: How did you get involved in your research? Prof. Nuru-Jeter: I have several lines of research and my work on stress is one of those lines of research. I was working at the department of Health in Washington D.C. where I was getting my M.P.H. at George Washington University. I was doing a lot of work there, around trying to help communities of color and low-income communities navigate the public healthcare system, the Medicaid system, and other social service systems in order to meet their needs. I became very interested in the topic of social equity and inequity. I worked at the department of health and I did that for a year or so. After that, I worked at a non-profit organization and I am still doing similar work. It is interesting to do similar work from different perspectives. There is the government perspective, where we are creating and delivering programs to meet the needs of the community, and the nonprofit perspective, where you are advocating on the behalf of the community. In both of those positions, I had the opportunity to work with various community groups and that was really my introduction to the disconnect between our service organizations with what we say are communities needs and what communities are saying their real needs are along with their barriers to access these services. I became really interested in the disconnect between service organizations in meeting community needs to better understanding the issues around equity and inequality and why, generally, colored and lower-income communities end up not being served as well as other communities. This sparked my interest in the idea of social inequality and I went back to school for my Baccalaureate and started doing more work in that area. The work that I do is in a field called “social epidemiology”, trying to better understand better how 61 • B erkeley S cientific J ournal • S tress • F all 2013 • V olume 18 • I ssue 1