Health and Society Scholars Begin Fourth Year
Health and Society Scholars Begin Fourth Year
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program is designed to build the nation's capacity for research, leadership and action to address more effectively the broad range of factors affecting health. When the Foundation held a national competition four years ago to select sites for the Health & Society Scholars Program, the newest of its fellows programs, Columbia was one of six universities to receive an award. Columbia's program is co-organized by ISERP and the Mailman School of Public Health, and is directed by Peter Bearman (Sociology/ISERP) and Bruce Link (Epidemiology/Sociomedical Sciences). The program has forged new connections between the uptown and downtown campuses, and among faculty from a wide range of schools and departments, including epidemiology, environmental health, medical anthropology, sociology, sociomedical sciences, urban planning, and social work.
The program brings three new scholars to Columbia each year for a two-year fellowship. These fellows participate in seminars and training courses as well as solo and collaborative research. The program has launched several working groups-clusters of faculty and fellows-that are developing new research programs in population health.
The Foundation is working to build connections among faculty and scholars across the six sites (which also include UC-Berkeley/San Francisco, Harvard, Michigan, Penn, and Wisconsin) through annual conferences that showcase scholar research. In addition, this fall Columbia is hosting a scholar-led conference, organized by second-year scholars Michael Emch, Sara Shostak, and Jennifer Stuber.
The Health & Society Scholars program has a broader impact on this campus by sponsoring a number of activities open to the Columbia community. This year's events include short courses by James Robins, Stefan Timmermans, Jennifer Hill, Andrew Gelman, and Ana Diez Roux, as well as public lectures by Keith Wailoo, Jane McLeod, and Paula Lantz.
Cohort 3 Scholars in Residence
We would like to announce the arrival of the Cohort 3 Health & Society Scholars: Debbie Barrington, Ph.D., M.P.H., Lisa M. Bates, Ph.D., S.M., and Cynthia Colen, Ph.D., M.P.H. We are excited to have these talented and motivated scholars joining us and are confident that they will further ISERP's connection with the health sciences.
Debbie Barrington received her Ph.D. in Epidemiologic Science at the University of Michigan. Her research interests include the social epidemiology of reproductive and perinatal outcomes and Caribbean-American women's health. Her dissertation work centered on the socioeconomic conditions of two generations of African-American and White women following U.S. Civil Rights legislation, and examines the contribution of intergenerational socioeconomic factors on present-day racial disparities in infant low birth weight.
Lisa Bates received her doctorate from the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. She is interested in how social stratification and processes of social change translate into health outcomes. Her dissertation focused on socioeconomic and cultural dimensions of immigrant adaptation and health in the U.S., with attention to life course issues, subgroup differences in the effect of immigrants on health, and critical perspectives on acculturation.
Cynthia Colen received her Ph.D. in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan. She is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the production and intergenerational reproduction of racial and ethnic health disparities, especially as they relate to women's reproductive wellbeing and perinatal outcomes. Colen's dissertation examined the extent to which upwardly mobile African-American and White women in the United States are able to translate their newfound socioeconomic status into beneficial maternal and infant health outcomes.
