David Williams
Williams has been a key figure in drawing attention to and gaining support for research designed to understand and reduce health disparities. "This is an opportune time in America for greater awareness and greater openness about the real gaps that exist in the quality of life," Williams said. "It's time to think of what works best from a policy perspective."
Williams has served on six panels for the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, including the committee that prepared the influential Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care report. He spoke at a lecture at HSPH last year on the subject of health disparities. Said Lisa Berkman, chair of the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, "We think of him as one of the most insightful thinkers around issues related to health disparities," said Berkman. "He is interested in factors that place people at a disadvantage, as well as those that serve to bolster people's reserve and their capacity to deal with difficult situations."
Said Dean Barry Bloom, "Widening health disparities within and among countries and populations are among the most pressing public health problems of our time. Dr. Williams has made invaluable contributions in understanding these important issues, and I look forward to his vision and energy at HSPH."
The move from the University of Michigan to Harvard offers Williams new professional opportunities, said Williams, just as did his move from Yale to Michigan 14 years ago. In particular, he welcomes potential collaborations on further research into health disparities and interventions.
At Michigan, Williams was the Harold W. Cruse Collegiate Professor of Sociology, a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research, and an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of Public Health. According to ISI Essential Science Indicators, he was one of the "Top 10 Most Cited Researchers in the Social Sciences during the last decade."
In recent work, he found that residential segregation and neighborhood quality contribute to racial disparities in the death rates of white and black Americans. He reported on how everyday encounters with discrimination diminish the mental and physical health of African-American women, and on how even small changes in socioeconomic status and social conditions can significantly improve health.
Williams' research spans individual and societal determinants of health and also includes the impact of religion and, in South Africa, the additional effects of torture and violence. In one line of inquiry, he is seeking to understand the extent to which the stress of unfair treatment has health consequences. In another area of research, he aims to understand the impacts of religion upon health.
Williams, a native of St. Lucia in the Caribbean Islands, has begun to explore the cultural heterogeneity within the black population, one of many racial categories that have been treated as homogenous by researchers, he said. For example, a paper in press focuses on the mental health of Caribbean blacks and shows that their health worsens with increasing lengths of stay in the United States.
On another front, Williams and his colleagues have finished collecting the data for a large national mental health study in South Africa and are now seeking correlates of mental health problems.
Beyond his own research and collaborations, Williams seeks to raise important issues and help channel other efforts, especially those that may shed light on helpful answers. With heightened awareness about the broad range of economic and social policies that affect health, for example, researchers could take advantage of natural experiments conducted by policy changes, such as an increase in minimum wage.
"A lot happening in society has health impacts," he said. "If we don't think about it ahead of time, it's too late to go back and assess the health consequences."
—CCM
Copyright, 2009, President and Fellows of Harvard College
