Co-Investigator ~ Core C: Psychosocial and Health Behavior Assessment Senior Research Associate in Psychology University of Pittsburgh Email: baa1@pitt.edu Phone: 412-624-2148 Fax: 412-624-2205

Research Program
Before joining the Behavioral Medicine Research Group, Dr. Anderson coordinated a
ten year program of research, conducted by the University of Pittsburgh Life Events and
Difficulty Research Laboratory, directed at examining the role of life stress on both mental
and physical health conditions. This work has focused on the adaptation and  implementation
of the Life Events and Difficulties Schedule (LEDS), a contextual assessment technique,
across the lifespan (i.e., age 8 to 90 years) as well as with a variety of patient  groups
(e.g., schizophrenia, recurrent unipolar depression, bipolar illness, multiple sclerosis,
breast cancer, etc) and non-patient  groups. This work has resulted in the augmentation
of the original LEDS methods (designed for use for ages 18 to 60 years) by developing
interview schedules and scoring manuals for children, adolescent, and elderly cohorts.
Current work is focused on an examination of the association between chronic life stress
and the progression of subclinical atherosclerosis as well as the development of the next
generation of contextual assessment tools.