Kyle Bourassa

Kyle is a Postdoctoral Scholar working in the Moffitt-Caspi Lab at Duke University. He is funded by the National Institute on Aging through a T32 training grant (T32-AG000029) provided to the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development in the Duke University Medical Center. Kyle received his B.A. from the University of Virginia in Psychology and History. He subsequently received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with a focus on Health Psychology from the University of Arizona. He completed his doctoral internship at the VA Puget Sound Healthcare System in Seattle.

Kyle’s research focuses on understanding the impact of stressful life events—such as divorce, bereavement, and trauma—on health across the lifespan. His work examines the social, behavioral, and affective mechanisms that link the experience of these stressors with dysregulated cardiovascular physiology, relevant disease outcomes, and mortality. To do so, Kyle makes use of both longitudinal cohort study designs and lab-based experimental paradigms, integrating top-down and bottom-up approaches. In addition to his work examining mechanisms of action, Kyle also studies how behavioral interventions might improve health among people who experience stressful life events.