Socioeconomic status (SES) is the single most powerful predictor of health and disease within human populations. From tribal groups to advanced, industrial democracies, within both adult and childhood populations, from ancient, historical cultures to contemporary societies, social position has borne strong, graded associations with both acute and chronic, both mental and physical human morbidities. Beginning in 2004, a nascent, interdisciplinary group of investigators from the University of California, Berkeley began a program of research addressing the neurodevelopmental origins of the SES-health association, under the sponsorship of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and an R21 award entitled Social Disparities in the Early Neurobiology of Stress. Having fostered to date the inception of fifteen productive pilot projects on this theme, the Berkeley Consortium on Population Health and Human Development-in collaboration with a similarly interdisciplinary group of developmental colleagues at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver-now presents a more focused, in-depth R24 application, comprising human, animal and bioethical studies of how childhood environments work together with epigenetically based vulnerabilities to generate socially partitioned developmental and health outcomes. Using a broad range of data-from assessments of epigenetic modifications and DNA methylation to population-level measures of social class and neurodevelopmental status at school entry-we describe a research agenda on Social Disparities in Epigenetic Regulation of Neurodevelopment that is capable of formative, singular contributions to the field of mind-body health. Notable strengths of the new application are: a) its use of multiple methods, models and disciplinary perspectives to examine core epigenomic and neurodevelopmental questions, b) its focus on health disparities-arguably the most elemental issue in population health science, and c) its setting within two North American universities, in nations with broadly differing societal approaches to the social stratification of health, development and illness.
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