Jerel P. Calzo, PhD

Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, Research Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital

 

Dr. Calzo is a developmental psychologist, an Instructor in Pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School, and a Research Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. His research focuses broadly on the development of gender and sexual orientation health disparities in adolescence and young adulthood, including projects focused on health correlates of masculinity, the socialization of attitudes towards homosexuality, and sexual orientation identity development. Dr. Calzo’s work on body image and eating disorders, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, focuses on body image and eating disorder risk in heterosexual and sexual minority (i.e., gay, bisexual, mostly heterosexual) males. His work breaks new ground by being among the first to trace the development of leanness and muscularity concerns in both heterosexual and sexual minority males across adolescence. Ongoing studies focus on how contexts of development (such as sports involvement, engagement in sexual minority community contexts) modify risk for negative body image and disordered weight-related behaviors in heterosexual and sexual minority males. Dr. Calzo also serves as a scientific consultant to the Massachusetts Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth and is a Founding Board Member and Emerging Scholar in the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood. Dr. Calzo received his PhD from the University of Michigan.