December 2025 department news updates
Happy end of the semester! It’s been a busy one so we wish you all a restful winter break in the weeks ahead. Enjoy the holidays and see you in the new year…
Joe Harris was recently quoted extensively in Newsweek for story on the American healthcare crisis. The article is available online here: Record number of Americans say health care system in “state of crisis”—Poll. He has also met with the Senior Legislative Assistant from Congressman Tom Suozzi’s office (D-NY) and Florida Democratic Congressional candidate Yen Cam Bailey in the last couple weeks to talk about healthcare reform.
Neha Gondal recently co-authored the article Predicting Social Network Homophily on Common Chronic Disease Risk Behaviors among Public Housing Residents in BMC Public Health, analyzing ego-centric network data from Boston public housing residents to identify how sugar-sweetened food and beverage consumption clusters across social ties. The study shows that chronic disease risk behaviors are shaped by everyday relationships, highlighting the importance of network-based approaches to public health interventions.
Jyoti Puri published Toward a Sociology of Loss and Life, an introduction to the special issue on death and mourning in Critical Sociology. And “Pandemic Diaries: Immigrant Perspectives” in World Making in Nepantla: Feminist of Color Navigating Life and Working in the Pandemic, edited by Gloria Gozalez López, Sharmila Rudrappa, and Christen Smith, forthcoming from University of Texas Press. She also gave the invited talk, “South Asia Migrations, Archaeologies of Death,” hosted by The Center for Race & Gender, University of California, Berkeley in October.
Leping Wang (2025 PhD alum) returned to Boston to receive the student award from The International Comparisons of Healthy Aging (ICoHA) Interest Group of the Gerontological Society of America at the GSA Annual Scientific Meeting in November.
And Stuti Das (2025 PhD alum) will be joining the UTMB School of Public & Population Health (SPPH), Department of Epidemiology, as a postdoctoral fellow in January 2026. The position is supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) (PI: Dr. Neil Mehta). Her work will focus on U.S. immigrant health, with particular attention to cardiometabolic disease and health system factors.