Theresa Bastain, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences; P50 Center Director; Program Director of ECHO
Biography
Theresa (Tracy) Bastain is an Associate Professor of Clinical Population and Public Health Sciences. Dr. Bastain attended Princeton University for her undergraduate studies and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for her MPH. Prior to attending Hopkins, she spent two years as a Pre-doctoral Intramural Research Training Award (Pre-IRTA) Fellow in the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Bastain returned to her native California to work with Drs. Frank Gilliland and John Peters at USC as the project administrator of the Children’s Environmental Health Center and Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center and she later completed her doctoral and postdoctoral studies in Epidemiology at USC. Dr. Bastain co-directs the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) Center for Environmental Health Disparities, a P50 Center of Excellence in Environmental Health Disparities supported by NIMHD and NIEHS. The MADRES Center supports three research projects, an administrative core, an investigator development core and a community engagement and dissemination core. A particular emphasis in the MADRES Center is to support and mentor early stage investigators from underrepresented backgrounds from the undergraduate level to junior faculty. Dr. Bastain also co-directs the USC site for the NIH Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program. Dr. Bastain’s research interests include understanding the roles of environmental exposures and psychosocial stress in early life and during critical periods of development on childhood neurolodevelopment, lung growth, asthma, obesity, metabolic outcomes and childhood growth. Dr. Bastain is also interested in the role of environmental exposures during pregnancy and their effects on maternal health outcomes, including depression, metabolic disease and cardiovascular health, during and after pregnancy. The work of the MADRES Center broadly aims to elimate health disparities and
Research Interests
- Population Characteristics
- Social Environment
- Disparities
- Racial Disparities
- Ethnic Disparities
- Built Environment
- Urban Health
- Immigrant Health
- Neighborhood
- Neighborhoods
- Community
- Community Engagement
- Social Determinants of Health
- Socioeconomic Characteristics
- Vulnerable Populations
- Residential Characteristics
- Health Care Disparities
- Morbidity
- Chronic Conditions
- Risk Factors
- Food Environment
- Physical Activity
- Maternal Health
- Adolescents
- Young Adults
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Obesity
- Diet
- Dietary Behaviors
- Food Deserts
- COVID-19
- Community Health
- Health Behavior
- Stress
- Structural Factors
- Molecular Epidemiology
- Cohort Studies
- Genetics
- Epidemiological Factors
- Exposures
- Lifestyle
- Air Pollution
- Soil Contamination
- personal
- environmental
- stationary
- mobile
- Environmental Justice
- Community Partnerships, Engagement, and Outreach
- Human Health Impacts
- respiratory
- cardiovascular
- neurological
- metabolic
- Health Endpoints
- EH Training and Teaching
- PFAS
- Population Life-stage Impacts
- pregnancy
- infancy
- adolescence
- adult
- health
- Research Design and Methods
- Public Health Data Sciences
Publications
Exposure to melamine and its derivatives and aromatic amines among pregnant women in the United States: The ECHO Program.
Chemosphere. 2022 Nov;307(Pt 2):135599. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.135599. Epub 2022 Aug 30. PubMed PMID: 36055588;
Association of Breastfeeding Duration with 12-Month Postpartum Blood Lipids in a Predominately Lower-Income Hispanic Pregnancy Cohort in Los Angeles.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Mar 4;19(5). doi: 10.3390/ijerph19053008. Epub 2022 Mar 4. PubMed PMID: 35270701; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8910591.
Daily Associations of Air Pollution and Pediatric Asthma Risk Using the Biomedical REAI-Time Health Evaluation (BREATHE) Kit.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Mar 17;19(6). doi: 10.3390/ijerph19063578. Epub 2022 Mar 17. PubMed PMID: 35329265; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8950308.
Third trimester cortisol is positively associated with gestational weight gain in pregnant women with class one obesity.
Int J Obes (Lond). 2022 Feb;46(2):366-373. doi: 10.1038/s41366-021-01009-8. Epub 2021 Oct 30. PubMed PMID: 34718334; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9012147.
Household pesticide exposures and infant gross motor development in the MADRES cohort.
Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2022 Mar;36(2):220-229. doi: 10.1111/ppe.12850. Epub 2021 Dec 29. PubMed PMID: 34964501; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8881403.
Courses Taught
- Foundations of Public Health
- Environmental Health: An Epidemiological Approach