A self-described "molecular sociologist" is extending his basic research to the national policy debate on health care reform. Bruce McEwen, head of the Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, led a panel of scientific experts last month at the Institute of Medicine's Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public. The Institute is the most prominent independent medical advisory board in the country and will release a report from the conference in November, as Congress is likely to be considering major health care legislation.
McEwen, who has been involved for about 10 years with health policy advisory groups, says his lab work on the impact of stress on the brain has led him to look beyond basic science to meaningful translational studies. "But now we're thinking beyond that even, to how the social environment that people are in will affect the structure and function of their brains," McEwen says.
The Institute of Medicine, the medical arm of the National Academies, recruited McEwen to moderate the panel on "The Science" at its Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public, held last month. Integrative medicine includes some controversial and hard-to-study "alternative" therapies such as acupuncture, yoga and meditation - not McEwen's particular interest - but more generally gives weight to preventive care and lifestyle and environmental changes that cultivate good health.
"Our health policy is still narrowly operating on the model of infectious disease - where you have a single cause of a disease and you have an antibiotic or some thing would help cure it, like penicillin," McEwen says. "Yet most of the diseases and disorders we're dealing with are polygenic and multifactorial in terms of the social and environmental causes." Take asthma and air pollution, or obesity, for instance, he says.