Sherman A James, Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Sociology; Community and Family Medicine; African and African American Studies  

Office Location: 213 Sanford Building
Office Phone: (919) 613-7338
Email Address: sjames@duke.edu

Areas of Expertise

  • Health Policy
    • Access to health care
    • Health Disparities
  • Immigration and Migration
  • Social Policy, Race/Ethnicity

Education:
PhD, Washington University in St. Louis, 1973
A.B., Talladega College, Talladega, AL, 1964

Research Categories: US Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Status and Health Care; Poverty and Health

Current projects: Life course Socioeconomic Position and the Health of African Americans: The Pitt County Study (PI), Reducing diabetes-related health disparities in African Americans (PI), The Southern Center on Environmentally-Driven Disparities in Birth Outcomes (Co-Director), The Health Legacy of Desegregation on Black/White Health Disparities in the South (PI)

Research Description: Research: Social determinants of U.S. racial and ethnic health disparities; community-based and public policy interventions to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities

Teaching (Fall 2009):

  • Pubpol 229s.01, Poverty, inequality, & health
    Rubenstein 151, W 10:05 AM-12:35 PM

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. James SA. "Epidemiologic Research on Health Disparities: Some Thoughts on History and Current Developments." Epidemiologic Reviews 31 (Winter, 2009): 1-6.
  2. James SA, VanHoewyk J., Belli RF, Strogatz DS, Williams DR. "Life-course Socioeconomic Position and Risk for Hypertension in African American Men: The Pitt County Study." American Journal of Public Health 96.5 (May, 2006): 812-817.
  3. Bennett GG, Wolin KY, James SA. "Lifecourse socioeconomic position and weight change among Blacks: The Pitt County Study." Obesity 15.1 (January, 2007): 172-181.
  4. Fowler-Brown A, Bennett G, Goodman M, Wee C, Corbie-Smith G, James SA.. "Psychosocial Stress and 13 year Changes in Body Mass Index in Blacks: The Pitt County Study." Obesity (Summer, 2009): 1-4.
  5. Haratatos J, Mahalingam R, James SA. "John Henryism, Self-Reported Physical Health Indicators, and the Mediating Role of Perceived Stress among High Socioeconomic Status Asian Immigrants." Social Science & Medicine 64 (February, 2007): 1192-1203.

Curriculum Vitae

Bio/Profile
Sherman A. James is the Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy Studies in the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy, Duke University. Prior to joining Duke University, he taught in the epidemiology departments at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (1973-89) and at the University of Michigan (1989-03). At Michigan, he was the John P. Kirscht Collegiate Professor of Public Health, the Founding Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH), and a Senior Research Scientist in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research.

James' research focuses on the social determinants of racial and ethnic health inequalities and community-based and public policy interventions designed to minimize, and ultimately eliminate, these inequalities.

James was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000. In 2001, he received the Abraham Lilienfeld Award from the Epidemiology section of the American Public Health Association for career excellence in the teaching of epidemiology. He is a fellow of the American Epidemiological Society, the American College of Epidemiology, the American Heart Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. In 2007-08, he was elected president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research (SER), the largest organization of its kind in the world. A social epidemiologist, James received his PhD (Social Psychology) from Washington University in St. Louis (1973.)

Sherman A James