Dr. Slavich has been named Co-chair of a national task force focused on assessing stress in primary care — the first such task force of its kind. Normative and especially “toxic” life stress exposure are a major contributing factor to numerous primary health care visits nationwide, but it is rarely assessed by primary care physicians. The goal of the task force is to help physicians better understand the importance of assessing life stress in children and adults and to provide physicians with affordable, high-quality assessment tools that they can use for this purpose.

Dr. Slavich is an expert in the conceptualization and assessment of life stress and has spent the past eleven years developing the first online system for assessing lifetime stress exposure, called the Stress and Adversity Inventory (STRAIN). The STRAIN is an NIMH/RDoC-recommended instrument for assessing life stress and is the only system that focuses on the systematic assessment of lifetime stress exposure. Dr. Slavich has been an expert advisor on the conceptualization and assessment of life stress for the NCI, NIA, NIMH, and NIH Science of Behavior Change Common Fund Program, and currently serves as Associate Director of the NIA Stress Measurement Network.

Dr. Slavich is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA, a Research Scientist at the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, Associate Director of the NIA Stress Measurement Network, and Director of the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research.