It was a pleasure for me to have been invited to participate in the second Rutgers Symposium on Self and Social Identity. The topic for the
1997 symposium—Self, Social Identity, and Physical Health: Interdisciplinary Explorations—unites two of my interests and goals as the
first director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research
(OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). First, exploring
the relationship between the self, social identity, and physical health is
an example of a more integrated approach to health research that my
office wishes to advance. The philosophy of the OBSSR is that scientific advances in the understanding, treatment, and prevention of disease will be accelerated by a more integrated approach to research—
one that recognizes the manifold connections between psychosocial,
behavioral, and biological functioning (Anderson, 1995; OBSSR,
1997). Figure F.1 (OBSSR, 1997) illustrates these connections, and
shows how constructs such as the self and social identity (which I place
in the behavioral, sociocultural, and environmental box) may interact
with biological processes to affect illness. It also shows that the presence of health problems may in turn have profound ramifications for
the self and social identity