Sierra Carter

Sierra Carter is an Associate Professor of Psychology at UGA and Director of the Center for Community and Family Research. Her research examines how racial trauma, chronic stress, and social and environmental conditions shape mental and physical health across the lifespan and generations. A central focus of her work is biological embedding and understanding how experiences of stress and adversity can become reflected in the mind and body over time through changes in stress physiology, inflammation and other biological processes. Her research also examines sources of culturally salient strength, protection, and healing that may interrupt these pathways and promote health and well-being.

Dr. Carter’s current research spans several interconnected areas, including racial trauma, maternal and reproductive health, stress and health across the lifespan, and the intergenerational transmission of stress and resilience. Her studies with pregnant women and families examine how experiences such as trauma, chronic stress, discrimination, and stressful health care experiences may influence maternal health, pregnancy and birth outcomes, fetal and infant development, and longer-term family well-being. This work brings together psychological, behavioral, and biological measures to better understand how experiences before and during pregnancy can shape health across generations.

Across her broader research program, Dr. Carter studies how racial trauma and other forms of chronic stress can contribute to psychological distress, physical health risk, physiological dysregulation, and accelerated biological aging. Her work considers not only individual experiences, but also the families, communities, health care systems, and places in which people live. This perspective is central to her research with marginalized communities in Georgia, including rural communities, where she and her collaborators examine both the conditions that contribute to health inequities and the cultural, relational, and community strengths that support strength and healing.

A major goal of Dr. Carter’s research is to move beyond documenting disparities toward developing and testing approaches that can improve health and systems of care. Her current work includes community-engaged research, behavioral and preventive interventions, and efforts to improve maternal health care and reduce harmful experiences within health care settings. Across these projects, she seeks to identify actionable psychological, biological, relational, and community pathways that can be targeted to reduce the health consequences of chronic stress and trauma and create conditions in which people and communities that have experienced longstanding health inequities can live longer, healthier lives.