NIH Matilda White Riley Distinguished Lecturer

The Virus of Racism: Understanding its Threats, Mobilizing Defenses

David R. Williams, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Florence & Laura Norman Professor of Public Health
Chair, Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences,
Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Professor of African and African American Studies,
Harvard University

David Williams, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Norman Professor of Public Health and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. He is also a Professor of African and African American Studies and Sociology at Harvard. The author of over 500 scientific papers, his research has addressed how race, stress, socioeconomic status, racism, health behavior and religious involvement can affect health. The Everyday Discrimination scale that he developed is the most widely used measures of discrimination in health studies. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has been ranked as the Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences and as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. His research has been featured in the national print and television media and in his TED Talk.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early-Stage Investigator Honoree

The multidimensional clustering of health and its ecological risk factors

Noli Brazil, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Human Ecology
University of California, Davis

Noli Brazil, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on revealing understudied patterns, causes, and consequences of neighborhood inequality in cities and metropolitan areas. He examines spatial inequality across multiple ecological dimensions, including transportation, health, environmental, economic, education, and crime. The rationale driving this comprehensive and transdisciplinary approach is the perspective that neighborhoods are shaped by multiple ecological factors and, in turn, shape multiple outcomes, such as well-being. Dr. Brazil earned a Ph.D. in Demography from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University. Prior to coming to UC Davis, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course at Yale University and the Spatial Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early-Stage Investigator Honoree

Shift-&-persist and discrimination predicting depression across the life course: An accelerated longitudinal design using MIDUSI-III

N. Keita Christophe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor,
Wake Forest University
Incoming Assistant Professor,
McGill University

N. Keita Christophe, Ph.D., is an incoming assistant professor at McGill University and currently serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Wake Forest University. Dr. Christophe received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research uses a variety of quantitative methods to focus on the impact of discrimination on the psychological wellbeing of minoritized youth across development, as well as individual, familial, and contextual cultural factors that may promote wellbeing and provide resilience in the face of discrimination.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early-Stage Investigator Honoree

Structural Intersectionality as a New Direction for Health Disparities Research

Patricia Homan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Associate Director, Public Health Program
Florida State University

Patricia Homan, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Public Health Program at Florida State University. She is also an associate of FSU’s Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy and the Center for Demography and Population Health. Her research focuses on developing theory and measurement for structural sexism, structural racism, and other forms of structural injustice, and examining how these forces shape health. Her work has been published in American Sociological Review, Demography, American Journal of Public Health, Health Affairs, Social Forces, Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Health Services Research, The Gerontologist, and The Journals of Gerontology: Series B. Her research has won multiple awards including the 2022 Early Career Gender Scholar Award from SWS South, 2021 ASA Sex & Gender Section Distinguished Article Award, and the 2019 Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award from the ASA Medical Sociology Section.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early-Stage Investigator Honoree

Meaningful causal decompositions in health equity research

John W. Jackson, Sc.D.
Assistant Professor
Departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Mental Health
Johns Hopkins University

John W. Jackson, Sc.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Mental Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and core faculty in the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity and Center for Health Disparities Solutions. His research primarily focuses on developing methodological tools for translational health equity research. This includes methods to identify high leverage targets and strategies for interventions that address health disparities, as well as methods to evaluate interventions and translate them to new populations and contexts, with current applications in healthcare and clinical prognosis. His work has been funded by a K01 award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute as well as pilot funding from Johns Hopkins University. He serves on the editorial board at Epidemiology and also Sociological Methods & Research.

NIH Matilda White Riley Early-Stage Investigator Honoree

Mental health, family functioning, and sleep in cultural context among American Indian/Alaska Native urban youth: A mixed methods analysis

Alina Palimaru, Ph.D., M.P.P.
Associate Policy Researcher
RAND Corporation

Alina Palimaru, Ph.D., M.P.P., is an associate policy researcher at RAND. Trained as a health services researcher, Palimaru has academic and first-hand practical experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g., psychometrics, interview and focus group methods). Much of her prior work identified disparities in health outcomes among vulnerable populations such as adults with physical disability, mental health and substance use problems, as well as adults with multimorbidity experiencing homelessness. Findings from her studies have been used by clients, such as Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and regional health plans, to modify their service provision to underserved populations. Dr. Palimaru also has experience working with data relating to AI/AN youth in the context of sleep health, substance use prevention, and social determinants of health.