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She is currently working on the influence of neighborhood and community factors, such as violence and unsafe housing, on psychosocial functioning among African-American women newly diagnosed with breast cancer.
"The latest research is looking at how your idea of place influences your health," said Gehlert, noting how a person lives can actually change their biology by changing their biochemistry.
Take, for example, Gehlert said, a woman who does not have breast cancer, but whose body experiences a nonhereditery mutation while she's living in a stressful, unhappy environment that she has little control over.
When the mutation occurs, the woman's body will have lost its natural ability to turn off the mutation because of her biochemistry resulting from her stress and unhappiness, said Gehlert.
The implications for the medical community are to pay more attention to people's environment and their mental health, she said.
Other researchers are taking note of Gehlert's ideas on the subject. She has been asked to be on the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Human Genome Research Institute in Washington, D.C.
According to its Web site, "The Board of Scientific Counselors previews and evaluates the intramural research programs of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and provides periodic technical and scientific peer review of the work of individual investigators in the Division of Intramural Research (DIR)."
Local Women Included in PMDD Study
Local residents, women in particular, may remember another of Gehlert's research studies. Back in the late '90s, she was the lead researcher on a community-based study funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health to determine if PMDD was a real condition and, if so, how prevalent was it. Gehlert used a random sampling of women from two urban and two rural sites - one of the rural sites was Franklin County.
The Missourian ran a feature story on Gehlert's PMDD research in the June 6-7, 1998, issue.
The results of the study, which were just published last year, affirmed that PMDD does exist, but its prevalence is considerably lower than previously thought - just 1.3 percent.
These findings are meaningful for everyday women because they validate the diagnosis in those few women who have the disorder when they seek treatment or call in sick to work on days they are markedly impaired by symptoms, Gehlert wrote in her article about the study results. On the flip side, the findings prevent women from being diagnosed with a disease in error, she noted.
The results of the study had another impact. If you watch much TV, you may have noticed a change in how the birth control pill Yaz is advertised. Ads used to claim the brand cleared up acne and also eased the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
That was overstating the case, the Food and Drug Admistration said.
Today, Yaz ads are careful to point out that the pill, prescribed for birth control, has a side benefit of treating the symptoms of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, an extreme, debilitating form of PMS that affects only a tiny portion of the population.
Why the switch? One of the reasons was the results of Gehlert's research, she told The Missourian.
Gehlert was recently commissioned by the College of Psychiatry of Ireland to write a second article about the PMDD study.
Moves Home From Chicago
Gehlert joined Wash. U.'s Brown School in January. She had previously been with the University of Chicago as the Helen Ross Professor in the School of Social Service Administration, the Institute of Mind and Biology and the Department of Comparative Human Development.
In Chicago, Gehlert also served as associate director of the NIH-funded Institute for Translational Medicine and co-chaired its Community Translation Science Cluster.
Although she has moved to St. Louis, Gehlert remains the principal investigator and director of the University's NIH-funded Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research, which is planned to be a joint center with Wash. U.
"NIH only funded eight of these centers in the United States, so I was really lucky to get one," Gehlert said.
The center takes a unique approach to studying disease, particularly cancer, she noted. It brings scientists together who may be studying different aspects of cancer to share ideas and information.
"Before that it was like we were all touching the same elephant, but we were blindfolded and each touching a different part," Gehlert commented.
Now with the Center for Interdisciplinary Health Disparities Research, it's as if the blindfolds have been removed and they can see what the others are doing and how their work may relate, she explained.
Small Town Girl
Gehlert grew up in Union back in the '50s and '60s, the daughter of Mary and Charley Gehlert, both of whom have passed away. She graduated from Union High School in 1966 and went on to study at the University of Missouri-Columbia, where in 1979 she earned a master's degree in biological anthropology and a minor in zoology.
She earned a master's of social work in 1982.
"I started with anthropology," said Gehlert. "I've always been interested in why people behave the way they do, which is cultural anthropology."
Looking back, she noted her interest in diversity was no doubt influenced by the homogenous community she grew up in.
"I think I was drawn to diversity because I grew up in such a nondiverse environment," Gehlert said.
She also credits her parents with making her into the researcher she is today - her dad, who worked his whole life as a reporter for the Franklin County Tribune, and her mom, who also worked at the Tribune before taking a job with Southwestern Bell. They may not have held numerous college degrees, but "they always spoke very well," said Gehlert, and they exposed her to a wide variety of subjects through their work and interests.
Gehlert smiled at the suggestion that her mother, who died of breast cancer when Gehlert was just 19, would be proud to know all that her daughter is doing to understand health disparities, women's health in particular.
"My dad would say, 'Yeah, you've done well. But are you being nice to people?' " Gehlert said, grinning. "To him, that's what was really important.
"My mom, she was more worldly. I think she would be impressed and proud."
Gehlert's childhood friends sure are. She's still in touch with nine of her grade school friends and invited all of them to the E. Desmond Lee Professor installation ceremony. Several of them did attend.
"Her work is changing the future of women's health," Needra (Jones) Troyer, now of Salt Lake City, Utah, remarked.
Gehlert is proud to be the E. Desmond Lee Professor. She's also excited about the opportunities it will provide. It's an endowed chair that will provide Gehlert "discretionary" funding to conduct research studies that don't fit into federal study guidelines.
Since moving back to Missouri and settling in St. Louis, Gehlert has been drawn to her home community. She has bought a rustic cabin here in Franklin County as a place to come and get away from city life.
"It's wonderful to go back to my roots," she said.
