- Sep 5, 2025
- by Anthony D. Ong and Frank D. Mann
- Holistic Human Health
The lifelong consequences of social connection
This article originally appeared on the Character & Context Blog from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
The ties that bind — and fray
Using data from over 6000 participants in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, we developed a new way of measuring social well-being across early life and later adulthood. This measure of cumulative social advantage looks at the number, quality, and supportiveness of people’s relationships — from childhood caregivers
Michelle Scott-Pierce
As the Associate Director of Operations/EFNEP Coordinator for New York State, Michelle provides leadership and operational oversight under the guidance of the Director of FNEC. Michelle administers WebNEERS, ensuring the program meets its reporting and evaluation needs, and spearheads the development and implementation of training for EFNEP staff in both in-person and online formats.
Michelle coordinates the submission of budget projections and oversees expenditures, maintaining strict compliance with Institutional Review Board (IRB) and USDA/NIFA requirements
Deborah Sellers
Deborah Sellers serves as the Director of Research and Evaluation for the Residential Child Care Project (RCCP) in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR). In this position she facilitates research and evaluation activities in RCCP by identifying new avenues for research, supporting the development of new proposals, monitoring and/or assisting with data collection, processing, and analyses, and writing manuscripts for publication. Dr. Sellers also oversees the data collection efforts associated with the implementation of RCCP's Children
Marianella Casasola
Marianella Casasola earned her undergraduate degrees in Psychology and Spanish Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Her expertise is in infant cognitive development and early word learning with a particular interest in the interaction between language and thought during the first years of development. Along with her students, she examines various aspects of early cognitive and linguistic development, but is especially interested
Elizabeth Johnson
Dr. Liz Johnson is an Associate Professor of Molecular Nutrition at Cornell University in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Freeman Hrabowski Scholar. Her work focuses on understanding how metabolite production by the gut microbiome influences host phenotypes as well as how the lipid content of host diets affects the establishment of the microbiome. She studied biology at Spelman College before pursuing a PhD investigating cell cycle transcriptomics at Princeton University. Liz went on to
