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Emma Adam

Edwina S. Tarry Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
Emma Adam

IPR Fellow

Research Areas:
Education and Human Development, Health Inequalities, Race, Poverty, and Inequality

PhD, Child Psychology, University of Minnesota, 1998

Adam received her PhD in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago. An applied developmental psychobiologist, Emma Adam has been with Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy since 2000. She studies how everyday life experiences in home, school, and work settings influence levels of perceived and biological stress in adolescents and young adults. Her work traces the pathways by which stress "gets under the skin" to contribute to youth outcomes. By using noninvasive methods such as diary measures of stress, measurement of the stress-sensitive hormone cortisol, and measurement of sleep hours and quality, she is identifying the key factors that cause emotional and biological stress in adolescents and young adults and the implications of stress for daily functioning, emotional and physical health, cognition, and academic outcomes.   

Adam’s work has revealed racial and socioeconomic disparities in stress, cortisol and sleep, with potential implications for understanding disparities in health and attainment. Adam’s recent theoretical models and current program of research are focused on understanding the impact of race-based stress on youth stress, stress biology and developmental outcomes. She is also currently testing several interventions aimed at improving youth health and academic outcomes by reducing perceived stress, regulating stress biology, and promoting race-based coping resources, such as a strong ethnic and racial identity.  

Adam is a member of the Society for Research in Child Development, the Society of Research on Adolescence, and the American Psychological Association and is the President of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology.  Adam’s research has been supported by multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Sloan Foundation, the William T. Grant Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation and the Spencer Foundation. Adam was a William T. Grant Faculty Scholar and received the Curt Richter Award from the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology. Her current research on race-based disparities in stress and academic outcomes is funded by the Russel Sage Foundation and her research on the impact of mindfulness on youth emotional wellbeing is funded by the NIH. 

Current Research

Youth Mindful Awareness Project (YMAP). In collaboration with Dr. Richard Zinbarg in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern, and collaborators at UCLA and Vanderbilt, Adam is examining the impact of weekly mindfulness coaching and practice on adolescent mood and on symptoms and diagnoses of anxiety and depression. The study, a multi-phase randomized control trial, is funded by NIH.  

Trends In Adolescent and Young Adult Depression and Anxiety (TAYADA). In secondary analyses of existing large datasets, Adam and post-doctoral scholar Sarah Collier Villaume are examining changes in youth depression and anxiety over historic time, attempting to isolate the factors driving increases in depression for youth, as well as age disparities In depression, with adolescents and young adults experiencing greater symptoms and diagnoses of depression and anxiety than middle-aged and older adults.  

Biology, Identity and Opportunity (BIO) Study. In this project, funded by the Lyle B. Spencer Research Grant from the Spencer Foundation, Adam, along with IPR social psychologist Mesmin Destin and Adriana Umaña-Taylor from the Harvard University School of Education, is measuring how racial and ethnic stressors affect the stress hormone cortisol, sleep hours, sleep quality, cognition, and academic outcomes in a group of 300 high school freshman.  Students are being recruited in the 9thgrade and are followed across high school. Adam and her team will also work to improve regulation of stress biology and related academic and health outcomes through application of a random-assignment intervention. One group of students will be randomly assigned to an eight-week program designed by Umaña-Taylor that promotes exploring one's identity with respect to culture, heritage, and race. Another group will receive eight weekly sessions on college and career planning. The researchers will look at the impact of these programs on stress biology and sleep, student well-being, and academic outcomes such as grades and high school graduation rates.  

Selected Publications

Koning, S., E. Adam, A. Kapoor, and T. McDade. 2025. Echoes of conflict and displacement in maternal health: Life-course violence, timing, and maternal stress after childbirth at the northern Thailand-Myanmar border. Psychoneuroendocrinology 171: 107189. 

Koning, S., C. Kessler, T. Canli, E. Duman, E. Adam, R. Zinbarg, M. Craske, J. Stephens, S. Vrshek-Schallhorn. 2024. Early-life adversity severity, timing, and context type are associated with SLC6A4 methylation in emerging adults: Results from a prospective cohort study. Psychoneuroendocrinology170: 107181. 

Del Toro, J., D. Bernard, R. Lee, and E. Adam. 2024. Framing resilience linked to parental ethnic-racial socialization as hidden: A hidden resilience conceptual framework. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 18(7): e12984. 

Cai, T., B. Yang, Z. Zhou, K. Ip, E. Adam, C. Haase, and Y. Qu. 2024. Longitudinal associations between neighborhood safety and adolescent adjustment: The moderating role of affective neural sensitivity. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 67: 101380.   

Villaume, S., J. Stevens, M. Craske, R. Zinbarg, and E. Adam. 2024. Sleep and daily affect and risk for major depression: Day-to-day and prospective associations in late adolescence and early adulthood.Journal of Adolescent Health 74(2): 388–91. 

Villaume, S., S. Chen, and E. Adam. 2023. Age disparities in prevalence of anxiety and depression among US adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. JAMA Network Open 6(11): e2345073–73. 

Kessler, C., S. Vrshek-Schallhorn, S. Mineka, R. Zinbarg, M. Craske, and E. Adam. 2023. Experiences of adversity in childhood and adolescence and cortisol in late adolescence. Development and Psychopathology 35 (3): 1235–50. 

Adam, E. 2023. Natural disasters as natural experiments: Lessons for human stress science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 120(44): e2316231120.  

McMahon, T., S. Collier-Villaume, and E. Adam. 2023.  Daily experiences and adolescent affective wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic: The CHESS model. Current Opinion in Psychology 101654.  

Adam, E., S. Collier Villaume, S. Thomas, L. Doane, and K. Grant. 2023. Stress and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity in adolescence and early adulthood. In APA handbook of adolescent and young adult development, 55–72, eds. L. Crockett, G. Carlo, and J. Schulenberg (American Psychological Association).  

Guardino, C., D. Rahal, G. Rinne, N. Mahrer, E. Davis, E. Adam, M. Shalowitz, S. Ramey, and C. Schetter. 2022. Maternal stress and mental health before pregnancy and offspring diurnal cortisol in early childhood. Developmental Psychobiology 64(7): e22314. 

Keenan-Devlin, L., B. Smart, W. Grobman, E. Adam, A. Freedman, C. Buss, S. Entringer, G. Miller, and A. Borders. 2021. The intersection of race and socioeconomic status is associated with inflammation patterns during pregnancy and adverse pregnancy outcomes. American Journal of Reproductive Immunology 87(3): e13489. 

Collier Villaume, S., J. Stephens, E. Nwafor, A. Umaña-Taylor, and E. Adam. 2021. High parental education protects against changes in adolescent stress and mood early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Adolescent Health 69(4): 549–56.  

Stephens, J., C. Kessler, C. Buss, G. Miller, W. Grobman, A. Border, L. Keenan-Devlin, and E. Adam. 2020. Early and current life adversity: Past and present influences on maternal diurnal cortisol rhythms during pregnancy. Developmental Psychobiology 63(2): 303–19.  

Adam, E., E. Hittner, S. Thomas, S. Collier Villaume, and E. Nwafor. 2020. Racial discrimination and ethnic racial identity in adolescence as modulators of HPA axis activity. Development and Psychopathology 32(5): 1669–84.  

Adam, E., S. Collier Villaume, and E. Hittner. 2020. Reducing stress disparities:  Shining new light on pathways to equity through the study of stress biology. In Confronting Inequality:  How Policies and Practices Shape Children’s Opportunities, eds. L. Tach, R. Dunifon, & D. Miller (Washington: APA Books).