How Racism and Inequality Make Us Sick - Lunch with Dr. David R. Williams

Please join us for a free lunch and round table conversation with Dr. David R. Williams alongside fellow students at Duke. The event will begin promptly at 12pm and conclude at1pm. Following the viewing of a short video and a brief interview, students will engage in conversation and a round table Q&A with Williams. Registration required.

This event is for students. Please show a student ID upon entrance.

Co-sponsored by the Theology, Medicine, & Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School, The Purpose Project at Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities, & History of Medicine.

Dr. Williams will also be giving the inaugural Richard Payne Lecture in Faith, Justice, and Health Care at Duke Divinity School on Thursday, November 3rd at 5:30pm. Free and open to the public. More information.

About: Dr. David R. Williams is the Norman Professor of Public Health and Chair, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also a Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His prior faculty appointments were at Yale University and the University of Michigan. He holds master’s degrees in Public Health and Divinity and a PhD in Sociology.

An internationally recognized social scientist, he has authored more than 500 scientific papers and his research has enhanced our understanding of the complex ways in which socioeconomic status, race, stress, racism and health behavior can affect health. The Everyday Discrimination Scale that he developed is the most widely used measure of discrimination in health studies. He has also studied the association between religious involvement and health, directed a national study on forgiveness and health and co-edited (with Loren Toussaint and Everett Worthington) a 2015 book on Forgiveness and Health.

Dr. Williams is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received Distinguished Contribution Awards from the American Sociological Association, the American Psychological Association, and the New York Academy of Medicine. He has been ranked as the Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences, worldwide, and as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.

He has played a visible, national leadership role in raising awareness levels of inequities in health, including serving as staff director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America and a key scientific advisor to the award-winning PBS film series, Unnatural Causes: Is inequality Making Us Sick? His research has been featured in the national print and television media and in his TED Talk.

Host or Publisher Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initative