Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Obesity, a risk factor for CVD, is a growing public health problem even in young children, highlighting early childhood as a potential point of prevention for later life disease. Psychosocial stressors in early childhood, such as experiencing parental substance use or depression, violence, household chaos, or negative life events, have been linked to health problems such as CVD and obesity in adulthood. Changes in biology and behavior have both been proposed to link early stress and later health problems. One proposed mechanism between early stress and later CVD risk is dysregulation in cortisol, a hormone responsible for responding to stress and regulating daily processes like metabolism. It is currently unknown whether cortisol dysregulation mediates the association between early psychosocial stress and adolescent biological and behavioral risk for CVD and obesity. Risk factors for CVD include more inflammatory/metabolic markers in the blood, obesity, unhealthy diet and eating behaviors, lower physical activity, and greater sedentary behavior. The goal of this project is to understand whether cortisol dysregulation is a pathway between early childhood stress and risk for CVD as early as adolescence in order to identify targets for interventions that will reduce the burden of CVD and obesity on populations who have experienced early stress.