2015–2016 Gijs van Seventer Environmental Health Seminar Series Launches.
Disparities in environmental health will be the timely and challenging topic of the 2015–2016 Gijs van Seventer Environmental Health Seminar Series.
This year’s sessions will focus on emerging research on at-risk populations; effects of disparities during the lives of affected persons; and research methods used to characterize multiple, cumulative exposures.
David R. Williams, a leading social scientist focused on social influences on health, will deliver the first talk on Friday, September 25. Williams is the Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University. He will present “Racial Inequalities in Health: Opportunities for Greater Integration of Environmental Research.”
The series, organized by environmental health faculty member Jean van Seventer and assisted by doctoral students Anna Rosofsky and Lariah Edwards, addresses the topic of environmental health disparities at a key time for the School. Several environmental health faculty members were recently awarded a research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop an environmental health disparities center, in response to a joint request for applications from the NIH and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The upcoming enter will be co-led by Professor Jonathan Levy and Francine Laden, a professor of environmental epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School. “Assistant Professor Patricia Fabian heads up one of the three research projects and Madeleine Scammell heads up the community engagement core, “ Levy said, “and we also have a linkage with Children’s Health Watch and the Data Coordinating Center.”
As part of the series, Levy, Fabian, and Scammell will deliver lectures throughout October on methods to study environmental health disparities.
All events in the series will be held on Fridays from 12:45 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. in room L210.
September 25
Introduction to Health Disparity Research; the Interface between Health Disparity Research and Minority Health Research
Speake
r: David R. Williams, PhD, MPH
Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health,
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health;
Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/david-williams/
Summary:
Racial and ethnic stigmatized populations experience higher rates of illness, impairment, and death than the average of their societies in the US and globally. These disparities are also seen in the earlier onset of illness, more severe disease and poorer quality of care for racial/ethnic minorities compared to their majority peers. Socioeconomic status (SES), whether measured by income, education or occupational status, is among the most robust determinants of variations in health. All indicators of SES are strongly patterned by race, but racial disparities in health typically persist, although reduced, across all levels of SES. “Race” reflects simultaneously unmeasured confounding for biological factors linked to ancestral history and geographic origins, and environmental exposures. These environmental factors include the current psychological, social, physical, and chemical environment, as well as, exposures over the life-course and across generations, and biological adaptation to these environmental exposures. Directions for future research and intervention are discussed
Speaker Information:
Williams focuses on racial and socioeconomic differentials in health. He has devoted considerable attention to identifying how life experiences directly linked to race affect health status and can explain racial differences in health. This has included developmental work on how perceptions of racial bias can affect health status. He has contributed to several integrative summaries outlining the conditions under which discrimination at both the interpersonal and the institutional level can adversely affect multiple indicators of health. Williams has also investigated how coping resources and strategies ranging from social support and religiosity to psychological attributes and health behaviors can modify the effects of stress on health. Much of his work has involved the analysis of large epidemiological studies. He has extensive experience with quantitative research strategies and in analyzing large, complex data sets. His current research includes studying the correlates of the health of Black Caribbean immigrants in the US, examining how race-related stressors (racial discrimination in the US and exposure to torture during Apartheid in South Africa) can affect health, examining the biological pathways by which stress is related to health, and assessing the ways in which religious involvement can affect health.
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