{"id":617,"date":"2021-11-08T10:52:44","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T15:52:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/?page_id=617"},"modified":"2026-04-20T17:20:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:20:05","slug":"boston-area-health-scholars-bahs","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/ciss\/community\/workshops\/boston-area-health-scholars-bahs\/","title":{"rendered":"Boston-Area Medical Sociologists (BAMS)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Boston-Area Medical Sociologists (BAMS)<\/strong> brings together social scientists, epidemiologists, medical scholars and other faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students who study health, broadly defined. The group began in Fall 2019 as a forum for bringing together medical sociologists from the greater Boston area to present their research, discuss new articles, and participate in professional development workshops. The group brings together scholars from Boston-area schools including Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis, Brown,\u00a0 Harvard, Northeastern, Simmons, UMass-Boston, and more. Meetings take place in person at CISS and hybrid. Please sign up for BAMS here,<\/a> and reach out to Jaya Mathur<\/a> (Fulbright-Nehru Visiting PhD Fellow at CISS) at jmathur@bu.edu\u00a0or\u00a0 Deborah Carr<\/a> (carrds@bu.edu) for further information, or to speak at an upcoming event.<\/p>\n

Spring 2026 Eve<\/strong>nts<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
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FRIDAY May 1, 10-11:30 a.m.\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Rural-Urban Differences in Older Adult Loneliness in the United States<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Center for Innovation in Social Science (CISS), 704 Commonwealth Ave or Zoom (please register here).<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Loneliness is a serious public health issue among the aging population, and leads to poorer functional and cognitive health as well as mortality over time. Research has highlighted the issue of social isolation in later life, especially in rural areas, yet differences between rural and urban older adults concerning their experiences of\u00a0loneliness\u00a0<\/i>are not well understood. Further, age trajectories of loneliness and potential gender differences that may vary by urban-vs-rural setting have received little attention. The proposed research will use longitudinal (2006-2022) Health and Retirement Study data to examine rural and urban differences in age trajectories of loneliness for both men and women over time, with additional attention paid to whether these have changed over time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prof. Chantel F. Pheiffer<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Chantel F. Pheiffer is an Assistant Professor in Urban Public Health at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Pheiffer\u2019s research investigates how migration and urban exposure affect health. Her work has examined various dimensions of health \u2013 including blood pressure, diet, obesity, and mental health. Pheiffer\u2019s research has been published in Health & Place, Global Public Health, Social Science & Medicine, and the Journal of Biosocial Science. Chantel holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University, an A.M in Global Development Policy from Boston University, and a B.A. in Government from Smith College. Chantel is also a Visiting Scholar in Population Studies at the Brown University Population Studies & Training Center.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prof. Jeffrey E. Stokes<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I am a quantitative sociologist specializing in aging, families, and health. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston College in 2017, and am currently Associate Professor of Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I am also Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed academic journal Research on Aging and was recently elected as a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America (BSS Section). In particular, my research focuses on the ramifications of marital, intergenerational, and social relationships for adults\u2019 health and well-being in mid- and later-life. This includes analysis of dyadic associations between intimate partners\u2019 marital quality and their mental, physical, and cognitive health in later life, as well as effects of neighborhood demographics and neighborhood social cohesion on adults\u2019 loneliness. My work has been supported by competitive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as well as the Donaghue Medical Foundation and the Mental Research Institute, and has been published in journals such as The Gerontologist, Social Science & Medicine, and the Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Social Sciences. Finally, I have an edited volume under contract with Cambridge University Press entitled The Cambridge Handbook of Relationships in Later Life (expected 2027).<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Please RSVP by 23 February, at jmathur@bu.edu<\/a>,\u00a0 so we can\u00a0plan for the event accordingly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Job Market Workshops: Tips for Finding Faculty Positions, Postdocs, and Non-Academic Positions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday, March 23, 3.30 – 5.00 PM ET, on Zoom.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Please register here to receive the Zoom link.<\/a>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

This fully virtual event features a panel of 5 speakers who, as recent PhDs, will share their experiences, insights, and advice on how to strategize while on the job market. Learn more about Drs. Stuti Das, Kristen Tzoc, Rebekah Getman, Meghann Lucy, and Tibrine da Fonseca in their biosketches below. They will discuss topics that include: deciding the types of jobs to apply for, tailoring application materials, preparing for interviews, and what they wish they knew while they were on the job market. The session will be moderated by Professors Deborah Carr and Alisa Lincoln, and will be followed up with a Q&A.<\/p>\n

Panelists<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stuti Das<\/a>\u00a0is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch. She received her PhD in Sociology from Boston University in 2025. Her research focuses on health disparities between foreign- and native-born populations and the social and policy factors that shape these patterns.<\/p>\n

Dr. Tibrine da Fonseca<\/a> is the Project Director for the Boston Community Health Collaborative at the Boston Public Health Commission. She leads efforts to deepen collaboration across health systems, public health, and community partners by aligning community health assessment and improvement planning efforts. She earned her doctorate in Sociology from Northeastern University, where she specialized in immigrant health research exploring how policy and place shape immigrant inclusion and well-being. Her work bridges social science and public health to elevate community leadership and advance health equity in Boston.<\/p>\n

Rebekah Getman<\/a> completed her PhD in Sociology at Northeastern in 2024, where she focused on medical sociology and completed a certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation studied the experiences and decision-making strategies of childbirth care providers and hospital administrators in Massachusetts during the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0 Just prior to defending her dissertation, she started a position at UMass Chan School of Medicine, where she is the administrative lead on a 6-year study of the impact of community partnerships in OB\/GYN settings on perinatal mood and anxiety disorder assessment, treatment, and outcomes.<\/p>\n

Meghann Lucy<\/a> is an assistant professor of sociology at Montana State University and received her PhD in sociology from Boston University in 2024. Her interests are in the intersections of sociology of health and medicine, consumption, and deviance and social control. Her work examines mental illness, stigma, culture, media, and the medicalization\u2014and criminalization\u2014of overaccumulation as hoarding disorder. Recent research explores how deservingness is constructed related to hoarding in housing court, how nonmedical actors identify and manage the consequences of mental illness and deviance in communities, changes in how drug use is discussed in obituaries related to off-time deaths in West Virginia over the course of the opioid crisis, and the meanings of clutter and role of object divestment in constructions of the contemporary self.<\/p>\n

Kristen Tzoc<\/a> graduated from Boston University with a PhD in Sociology in 2024, and\u00a0 joined the Hood College (Frederick, MD) faculty as an Assistant Professor of Sociology in September 2024.\u00a0 She teaches courses including Principles of Sociology, Social Inequalities, Childhood and Youth, Global Social Problems, Health, Medicine, and Society, and Methods for Social Science Research.\u00a0 Her research interests include social inequalities across the life course, aging and retirement, medical sociology, and labor market stratification.<\/p>\n

Session Moderators<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deborah Carr<\/a> is the director of the Center of Innovation in Social Science<\/a>\u00a0at Boston University and A&S Distinguished Professor<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Sociology.<\/a>\u00a0She is a life course sociologist who uses survey data and quantitative methods to study social factors linked with health and well-being in later life. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, RRF Foundation on Aging, Templeton Foundation, Borchard Foundation, and most recently Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, a member of the honorary Sociological Research Association, and the recipient of the\u00a02022 Matilda White Riley Distinguished Scholar Awar<\/a>d and\u00a02023 Outstanding Mentorship Award<\/a>\u00a0from the ASA Aging & Life Course section. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Science<\/a>s in 2024.<\/p>\n

Alisa K. Lincoln,<\/a> MPH, PhD is an Inter-disciplinary Professor of Sociology and Health Sciences and Director of the Institute for Health Equity and Social Justice Research at Northeastern University. \u00a0Her research examines the way that social exclusion and marginalization both contribute to and are consequences of poor mental health. Much of her work has included attention to the development of innovative models to increase community involvement in research. She is currently the Co-PI of the Salus Papuli Project, with funding from RWJF and the WK Kellogg Foundation which supports the development, implementation and evaluation of an innovative Judicial Education Program (JEP) To train judges in the social determinant of health. Her multiple research teams also prioritize the inclusion of students through a shared mentorship approach including undergraduates, master\u2019s level, doctoral level and post-doctoral students. She has over 20 years of continuous research funding from sources including NIMH, NIMHD, SAMHSA, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, WK Kellogg Foundation and NIJ.<\/p>\n

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Thursday, January 29<\/strong>, 2026.<\/strong> 1:30\u20132:45 PM. Works-in-Progress “Lightening Talks”\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this Zoom session, scholars will present their works-in-progress and receive constructive feedback and thoughtful questions from participants. Register here for Zoom link.<\/a><\/p>\n