# Mechanisms underlying resilience to neighborhood disadvantage (Administrative Supplement)

> **NIH NIH UH3** · MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $156,365

## Abstract

Summary
Decades of research have confirmed the damaging effects of chronic and acute adversities on socioemotional,
academic, and health outcomes [1-10]. And yet, many children growing up in these contexts demonstrate
`resilient' outcomes (operationalized here as both the presence of adaptive competence(s) and the absence of
psychopathology). How do children achieve such adaptive outcomes in the face of significant adversity? Extant
studies indicate that protective familial- and community-level factors promote socioemotional resilience by
buffering children from the effects of adversity [11-16]. Very little work, however, has considered the
neurobehavioral pathways through which these protective processes confer resilience [17]. The parent grant
will do just this in a sample of youth residing in neighborhood disadvantage, identifying neural markers of
resilience to chronic adversity and illuminating the multilevel etiologic processes through which protective
factors promote these neuro-resilient pathways. The proposed supplement will enhance this work, leveraging a
natural experiment with an exogenous and acute stressor (COVID-19 and its economic, social, and
personal impacts) to illuminate the ways in which protective factors promote neuro-resilience to acute adversity
as well. We propose to reassess all twin families eligible for the parent grant (i.e., early-to-mid adolescent twin
pairs residing in modestly-to-severely disadvantaged neighborhood contexts across lower Michigan),
conducting two online COVID-19 related assessments across the next year. We will specifically collect data on
the economic, occupational, health, and social impacts of the pandemic and their downstream mental health
consequences (e.g., depression, anxiety), as well as youth adaptive competencies in the face of COVID-19. In
this way, we can evaluate how the impacts of business and school closures unfold over the course of the
pandemic, as well as whether and how some youth developed resilience to these significant stressors. By
leveraging exposure to an exogenous and acute stressor like COVID-19, the proposed supplement will allow
the parent grant to expand its current focus on neuro-resilience to chronic adversity to also include an acute
stressor as well.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10159683
- **Project number:** 3UH3MH114249-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** S. Alexandra Burt
- **Activity code:** UH3 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $156,365
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2017-09-01 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10159683

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10159683, Mechanisms underlying resilience to neighborhood disadvantage (Administrative Supplement) (3UH3MH114249-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10159683. Licensed CC0.

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