Harvard social scientist to discuss 'Racism and Health'

David R. Williams of Harvard University will speak on “Racism and Health: Findings, Questions and Directions” on Tuesday, March 5 at 1:15 p.m. in the Campus Center Reading Room.

 

The Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and professor of African and African American studies at Harvard University, Williams is internationally recognized as a leading social scientist, enhancing the understanding of the complex ways in which race, racial discrimination, socioeconomic status and religious involvement can affect physical and mental health. The Everyday Discrimination scale that he developed is currently one of the most widely used measures. He is the author of more than 300 scholarly papers in scientific journals and edited collections and has played a visible, national leadership role in raising awareness levels of the problem of health disparities. Williams directed the South African Stress and Health Study, the first nationally representative study of the prevalence and correlates of psychiatric disorders in sub-Sahara Africa. He was also a key member of the team that conducted the National Study of American Life, the largest study of mental health disorders in the African-American population in the U.S. and the first health study to include a large national sample of blacks of Caribbean ancestry.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for Research on Families’ Tay Gavin Erickson Lecture Series, the Clinical Psychology Diversity Speaker Series, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, the Psychology Department Research Mentoring Group Speaker Series which is supported by the Center for Teaching and Faculty Development’s Mutual Mentoring Initiative, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Department of Public Health in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the Western Massachusetts Public Health Training Center.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

For more information, call 545-4631 or go to www.umass.edu/family.