Adolfo Cuevas

About

Adolfo G. Cuevas, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at NYU's School of Global Public Health, where he also co-directs the BioSocial Research Initiative (BSRI). His research examines how psychosocial stressors influence health across the lifespan, utilizing epidemiological, psychological, and biological approaches to understand these relationships. Dr. Cuevas currently leads three NIH-funded projects, totaling nearly $7 million, that investigate the effect of psychosocial stressors on biological dysregulation. His first project addresses how social adversity affects allostatic load across different life stages and identifies gene expression pathways linking adversity to biological stress, including the buffering role of social relationships. His other projects explore neighborhood and interpersonal stress in relation to obesity, focusing on molecular indicators of stress-related proinflammatory biology that may contribute to adipose tissue formation. Dr. Cuevas's work has been published in leading journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, and the American Journal of Public Health, and has been featured by media outlets including Forbes, USA Today, and NPR’s Code Switch. His contributions to research on stress and health have earned him numerous honors, including the Herbert Weiner Early Career Award, the National Minority Quality Forum’s 40…

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Psychology
• Gerontology
• Developmental psychology
• Psychiatry
• Immunology
• Clinical psychology
• Internal medicine
• Environmental health

Selected publications

• Remote work and loneliness: Evidence from a nationally representative sample of employed U.S. adults

  Journal of Affective Disorders · 2025-10-13 · 3 citations

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  PublisherDOI

• Neighborhood Opportunity and Biological Aging: Results From the Midlife in the United States

  Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine · 2025-07-14 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  OBJECTIVE: To quantify the association between neighborhood opportunity and biological aging as measured by epigenetic clocks. METHODS: This cross-sectional study pooled data from 1205 participants in the Midlife in the United States Biomarker Projects (2004-2016). Neighborhood opportunity was measured continuously based on the Childhood Opportunity Index 3.0, which evaluates census tract conditions across educational, health and environment, and social and economic domains. Biological aging was…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Measurement invariance of the perceived discrimination scale across race/ethnicity and sex: Findings from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study

  SSM - Mental Health · 2025-08-22 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Perceived racial discrimination during childhood and adolescence is a critical social determinant of health disparities. However, few scales measure perceived racial discrimination in these age groups, and even fewer are validated with robust psychometric properties or demonstrate measurement invariance across racial and ethnic or sex groups. This study examines the psychometric properties of the Perceived Discrimination (PD) scale, a seven-item questionnaire designed to assess societal rejectio…

  PublisherDOI

• Experiences of patient-provider concordance in healthcare among All of Us participants, 2017–2023

  Patient Education and Counseling · 2025-07-15 · 3 citations

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  PublisherDOI

• Perceived racial discrimination over the life course and financial stress

  Discover Social Science and Health · 2025-07-26 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Purpose To quantify the associations between perceived racial discrimination over the life course and financial stress. Methods The data are from the 2023 Survey of Racism and Public Health, a cross-sectional survey of adults. We employed mixed-effects linear models with zip code-level random effects adjusted for covariates. Results There were 4952 participants, with an average age of 46.8 years. The participants identified as follows: 2366 (48%) as White, 865 (17%) as Black, and 711 (1…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Applying a life course approach to assess the impact of psychosocial stress on allostatic load

  NIH · $1.2M · 2024–2027

Frequent coauthors

• David R. Williams

  21 shared

• Lorraine R. Reitzel

  The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

  18 shared

• Lorna H. McNeill

  The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

  15 shared

• David W. Wetter

  University of Utah

  15 shared

• Nga Nguyen

  Hanoi University

  13 shared

• Elaine J. Savoy

  Baylor College of Medicine

  12 shared

• Felicia D. Fisher

  12 shared

• Pragati S. Advani

  National Cancer Institute

  11 shared

Awards & honors

• Herbert Weiner Early Career Award
• National Minority Quality Forum’s 40 Under 40 Leaders in Min…
• Diversity Scholar Award from the Nutrition Obesity Research…
• National Institute of Health Loan Repayment-Renewal (2021)
• Diversity Scholar Award, Nutrition Obesity Research Center,…

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