The Massachusetts Public Health Association (MPHA) presented the Lemuel Shattuck Award to David R. Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), on June 6, 2014, citing his pioneering leadership in understanding how determinants such as socioeconomic status, race, and religion impact physical and mental health.
In presenting the award, MPHA cited Williams’ work as a local and national leader in the social sciences, his successful work to reduce health disparities, and his creation of the Everyday Discrimination Scale, currently one of the most widely used measures to assess perceived discrimination in health studies.
“Dr. Williams’ groundbreaking research on discrimination and health has dramatically increased our understanding of the way that racism leads to poor health,” said MPHA Executive Director Rebekah Gewirtz. “And more importantly, his research has led to concrete policy changes at the national level.”
Williams has published more than 250 scholarly works, yielding him international recognition and acknowledgement as one of the Top 10 most cited researchers in the social sciences during the decade 1995 to 2005.
Source: Massachusetts Public Health Association release