Jaime Slaughter-Acey
I am a maternal & child health (MCH) and social epidemiologist whose work focuses on socio-environmental and psychosocial determinants of women’s and family health across the lifecourse, with emphasis on health equity. My research emphasizes the use of socioecological and life-course approaches with Intersectionality Theory to study and address the ways that systemic racism, both structural and cultural, intersects with other aspects of social identity to create inequalities in MCH and other health outcomes.
My current research, funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Institute of Health (NIH), investigates the social significance of skin color as a driver of prepregnancy cardiometabolic health and birth outcomes for Black women. I am the Principal Investigator of the Interdisciplinary Research Invested in Social Equity (I-RISE) & Health Lab, which aims to integrate social science literature with epidemiologic and system science methods to the study of systemic racism, both structural and cultural, and its intersection with other aspects of social identity to create health and health care inequalities in MCH.
My research, published in major journals has been widely cited. Most notably, I won the 2020 NIH Matilda White Riley Early Investigator Award for my research on skin tone bias, racial discrimination and prenatal care use.