I am currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington, where I am also a Research Affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology and the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences.

My research focuses on the role that social factors play in driving racial disparities in physical and mental health. In one stream of research, I focus on the role of stress and coping resources in explaining Black-White differences in mental health. In a second stream of research, I complicate how race is used as a variable in health disparities research by considering how different specifications of race (such as skin tone or disaggregated multiracial status) can influence how we understand race-health relationships.

My research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Social Science and Medicine, Social Psychology Quarterly, and American Journal of Epidemiology. To date, I have received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ($105,000), the Michigan Center for Urban African American Aging Research, and the Canadian Sociological Association.

My article, “Do Racial Differences in Coping Resources Explain the Black–White Paradox in Mental Health? A Test of Multiple Mechanisms”, was selected as the winner of the 2022 Best Publication Award from the ASA’s Section on Sociology of Mental Health.