The Microbes and Social Equity working group and the University of Maine Institute of Medicine present the MSE spring speaker series 2022.

January 26, 2022, 12:00 - 13:00 EST
Dr. Katherine (Katie) Amato is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University. From her faculty profile page: "Katie Amato is a biological anthropologist studying the gut microbiota in the broad context of host ecology and evolution. She is particularly interested in understanding how changes in the gut microbiota impact human nutrition and health in populations around the world, especially those with limited access to nutritional resources. She also uses non-human primates as models for studying host-gut microbe interactions in selective environments and to determine whether the human gut microbiota has characteristics that are unique among primates. Her current research focuses on microbial contributions to host nutrition during periods of reduced food availability or increased nutritional demands, as well as microbial influences on brain growth."

Talk: "The Human Microbiome and Health Inequities"

Talk summary: The talk explores how the microbiome is likely to be a mediating pathway that translates disparities in people’s environments to disparities in health outcomes. It outlines the current state of the literature in this area and broadly suggests ways to move forward.