Transdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Racism & Health Inequities (RacismLab)

Through her entire research program, Professor Hicken committed to clarifying the social causes and biological mechanisms linking racial group membership to renal and cardiovascular disease inequalities. The major hallmark of her research is the integration of scientific knowledge from diverse disciplines, as this transdisciplinary approach to research allows for creative and innovative insights into the root causes and mechanisms of the seemingly intractable racial health inequalities. A significant portion of her research program falls at the intersection of sociology, geography, and environmental toxicology, examining the interrelated roles of racial residential segregation, neighborhood disadvantage, environmental hazards, and racial health inequalities.

Email: mhicken (at) umich (dot) edu

Gabrielle completed her studies in Sociology and Education & Child Study at Smith College in May of 2016. After a summer of teaching in 2013 she realized she was interested in researching racial and ethnic identity among Black people in America. The following semester she started research on race in education, with special attention to the salience of ethnic identities amongst Black college students. She is pursuing her doctorate in Sociology at the University of Michigan to delve further into studies of Black history and race relations. Her current project is a study of Black migration to and integration of Washtenaw County in Michigan. She is pursuing a career in research in order to use history to evaluate the contemporary impacts of “the color line” for Black people in different sites they have settled across the African Diaspora.

Email: glpeters [at] umich [dot] edu

Riana Elyse Anderson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. She received her PhD in Clinical and Community Psychology at the University of Virginia and completed a Clinical and Community Psychology Doctoral Internship at Yale University’s School of Medicine. She also completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Applied Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania supported by the Ford and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations. Before joining the University of Michigan, she was an Assistant Professor in Preventive Medicine and the Department of Children, Youth, and Families in the School of Social Work at the University of Southern California.

She uses mixed methods in clinical interventions to study racial discrimination and socialization in Black families to reduce racial stress and trauma and improve psychological well-being and family functioning. She investigates how protective familial mechanisms such as parenting and racial socialization operate in the face of risks linked to poverty, discrimination, and residential environment. Dr. Anderson is particularly interested in how these factors predict familial functioning and subsequent child psychosocial outcomes, especially when enrolled in family-based interventions. She has recently developed a five-session intervention entitled EMBRace (Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race) to alleviate racial stress and trauma in parents and adolescents in order to facilitate healthy parent-child relationships, parent and adolescent psychological well-being, and healthy coping strategies.

Email: rianae [at] umich [dot] edu

Shanice Battle is a PhD student at the School of Public Health in the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health. She previously worked at the CDC, Morehouse School of Medicine and Emory School of Medicine on various research projects focusing on the prevention of HIV/AIDS, childhood obesity, cardiovascular disease and maternal substance abuse. Her current research focuses on structural factors as a predictor of depression in black women and the ways social supports or stressors can impact that relationship.

Email: battlesd [at] umich [dot] edu

Melissa’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of public health, science and technology studies, and medical anthropology. She studies the social, cultural, ethical, political and historic tensions of sickle cell disease (SCD) in both the United States and Brazil. In her most recent project, she analyzes how frameworks of biology, social determinants, and policy respond to Brazilian cultural and historical ideas about race, health, identity, and legitimacy.

Email: mcreary [at] umich [dot] edu

Dr. Myles Durkee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He earned a B.A. in Psychology from Pomona College and a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology: Applied Developmental Science from the University of Virginia. He also completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan. Dr. Durkee’s research examines cultural invalidations and identity threats to determine how these experiences are associated with important psychological outcomes (e.g., mental health, identity development, & academic achievement). He also examines the process of identity development during late adolescents and emerging adulthood to determine how social identities are influenced by interpersonal experiences (e.g., racial microaggressions) and environmental factors (e.g., school contexts & racial climate). His research has been published in multiple research journals including: Child Development Perspectives, American Educational Research Journal, Social Science and Medicine, Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, and The Journal of Black Psychology.

Email: mdurkee (at) umich (dot) edu

Michael (Mike) Esposito is a postdoctoral fellow at the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan. Mike received his PhD in sociology from the University of Washington. His work is, generally, pointed towards advancing ideas of how race matters in population health. His work: (1) explicates how/why disparities in health outcomes are generated among the United States population (rather than in only quantifying the size of said inequalities); (2) connects larger structural features that are related to race (e.g., mass incarceration; racial residential segregation; socio-cultural environments) to health outcomes and disparities; and (3) examines how other socio-locational features that organize US society—e.g., gender; skin-tone—intersect with race to stratify health.

Email: esposm (at) umich (dot) edu

Kayla’s research interests are in the effects of oppression/privilege on minority groups’ mental health, especially African Americans and women. She is also interested in the development of a multicultural identity in young minority groups. She would like to study the effects of positive psychology practices on these issues.

Email: kjfike [at] umich [dot] edu

Asya Harrison is a Doctoral Candidate and National Science Foundation Fellow in the Combined Program of Education and Psychology at the University of Michigan. Her research explores three main questions; a) how do African American youth’s race-related school experiences influence their racial identity development, b) how does social hierarchy shape the racialized messages parents tell their children, and c) how do the spaces African American families occupy shape the conversations they have about race? Current research projects examine two aspects of parenting.  The first aspect is related to African American parental involvement in schools. The second aspect is related to how African American parental racial socialization changes as adolescents transition from middle to high school.

Email: asyaah (at) umich (dot) edu

Gabriel is a PhD student in the Health Behavior Health Education department at the School of Public Health and a Robert Woods Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar. He has worked globally with community organizations in Zambia and Kenya, developing interventions and supporting capacity building. Previously, he worked as a seventh grade teacher, harm reduction specialist, and HIV prevention researcher with the Ballroom community in Chicago and Philadelphia. His current research explores the intersections of race/ism, gender, and sexuality through examining negotiation of masculinities and their influence on the mental, physical and overall well-being of BlaQ men and masculine of center (MoC) individuals.

Email: knisbeth (at) umich (dot) edu

Amel Omari is a Doctoral Candidate in Health Behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Her dissertation research asks how racism constrains the health benefits of citizenship for migrants from Africa to France. Methodologically, Amel is interested in how the utility of quantitative analysis can be maximized by incorporating historical and social understandings of race. Understanding the contributions of racialization and migration to the health of migrants is critical to informing migration policies to promote health and health equity.

Email: oamel (at) umich (dot) edu

Dominique Sylvers is a doctoral student in the Health Behavior and Health Education (HBHE) at the School of Public Health. She received her Master’s of Public Health from HBHE in 2017, after which, she was involved with various aspects of chronic disease intervention research. As a pre-doctoral trainee in Social Environment and Health (SEH), her interest center around cognitive aging in African American adults, specifically the contextual influence of environmental factors such as of neighborhood residential segregation and education inequality. Dominique also has an interest in Population Health and is a Population Studies Center Trainee.

Email: domed (at) umich (dot) edu