Eric Loucks
Assistant Professor of Community Health
Eric Loucks will join the faculty of Brown’s Department of Community Health in January 2009, coming from McGill University in Montreal.
A specialist in cardiovascular physiology, Loucks focuses his research on the nexus of physiology and social determinants of cardiovascular disease, particularly such factors as education, socioeconomic conditions in childhood, and the quality of care that children receive from their parents.
“Specifically, I focus on sorting out the physiological mechanisms by which social factors may influence cardiovascular disease,” Loucks said, “such as blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and other more novel biomarkers such as inflammatory markers.
“During my Ph.D. I became increasingly interested in health promotion and upstream determinants of health: potential health determinants such as the economic circumstances we grow up in as children and live in as adults, as well as the quality of parental care and education we receive as children and young adults,” Loucks said. “There is a need to understand if, and how, these factors influence health using rigorous biomedical research methods.”
Using his research, policy-makers can define the impact of social factors on cardiovascular health, and high-risk individuals can learn about beneficial behavioral changes.
Loucks served as physiologist for community health professor Stephen Buka’s 2003-2007 NIH study, “Pathways Linking Education and Health in Middle Adulthood.” The study examined the biological mechanisms underlying the relationship between educational attainment and health outcomes, primarily cardiovascular disease, in middle adulthood. Such biological mediators as clotting factors, cortisol, lipids, and inflammatory markers were measured.
Loucks, a native of Victoria, B.C., Canada, will teach two courses at Brown this year: “Physiology” and “Social Determinants of Health,” variations of which he has taught at Harvard and McGill and in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
“[That appointment] was through a colleague who works at the Ministry of Health in Mongolia,” Loucks said. “With the rapid cultural changes taking place in Mongolia since the end of Soviet rule there, they are interested in the potential impacts of social and cultural change on health.”