Harvard School of Public Health
Department of Society, Human Development, and Health
677 Huntington Ave, 7th Floor
Boston
MAUSA
02115
Biographical Sketch: BIOBLURB: Nancy Krieger, PhD
Nancy Krieger is Professor of Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and Co-Director of the HSPH Interdisciplinary Concentration on Women, Gender, and Health. She received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. Dr. Krieger is an internationally recognized social epidemiologist, with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and the history of public health, combined with 25 years of experience as an activist in issues involving social justice, science, and health. In 2004, she became one of the ISI highly cited scientists, a group comprising “less than one-half of one percent of all publishing researchers.” Informed by an analysis of the history and politics of epidemiology and public health, Dr. Krieger’s work addresses three topics: (1) conceptual frameworks to understand, analyze, and improve population health and reduce health inequities, including the ecosocial theory of disease distribution she has been developing since 1994; (2) etiologic research on societal determinants of population health and health inequities; and (3) methodologic research on improving monitoring of health inequities. Examples of her epidemiologic research include: studies on racism, discrimination and health, including blood pressure and birth outcomes; socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in breast cancer; and research on appropriate measures of social class (individual, household, and neighborhood), both for population-based monitoring of social inequalities in health and studying women, gender, class, and health. She is editor of Embodying Inequality: Epidemiologic Perspectives (Baywood Press, 2004) and co-editor, with Glen Margo, of AIDS: The Politics of Survival (Baywood Publishers, 1994), and, with Elizabeth Fee, of Women’s Health, Politics, and Power: Essays on Sex/Gender, Medicine, and Public Health (Baywood Publishers, 1994). In 1994 she co-founded, and still chairs, the Spirit of 1848 Caucus of the American Public Health Association, which is concerned with the links between social justice and public health.