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Sherman A. James, Susan B. King Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy  

Duke Box: 90245
Email Address: sjames@duke.edu
Web Page: https://sanford.duke.edu/file/3699/download?token=FqjWR7j8

Areas of Expertise

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

Education:
Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis, 1973
Bachelor of Arts, Talladega College, Talladega, AL, 1964

Research Categories: Social Determinants of US Racial, Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities in Health Status and Health Care; Poverty and Global Health Disparities

Research Description: Social determinants of U.S.racial, ethnic and socioeconomic health disparities

Office Hours:
10am-12noon, Mondays

Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. He, W; James, SA; Merli, MG; Zheng, H. "An increasing socioeconomic gap in childhood overweight and obesity in China.." Am J Public Health 104.1 (January, 2014): e14-e22. [24228657], [doi]  [abs]
  2. Subramanyam, MA; James, SA; Diez-Roux, AV; Hickson, DA; Sarpong, D; Sims, M; Taylor, HAJ; Wyatt, SB. "Socioeconomic status, John Henryism and blood pressure among African-Americans in the Jackson Heart Study." SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE 93 (Fall, 2013): 139-146. [Gateway.cgi], [doi]  [abs]
  3. Abdulrahim, S; James, SA; Yamout, R; Baker, W. "Discrimination and psychological distress: Does Whiteness matter for Arab Americans?." SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE 75.12 (Fall, 2012): 2116-2123. [Gateway.cgi], [doi]  [abs]
  4. Anthopolos, R; James, SA; Gelfand, AE; Miranda, ML. "A Spatial Measure of Neighborhood Level Racial Isolation Applied to Low Birthweight, Preterm Birth, and Birthweight in North Carolina." Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology 2.4 (December, 2011): 235-246. [22748223], [doi]  [abs]
  5. Stanton, MV; Jonassaint, CR; Williams, RB; Suarez, EC; James, SA. "Socioeconomic status moderates the association between John Henryism and NEO PI-R personality domains.." Psychosom Med 72.2 (Spring, 2010): 141-147. [20100884], [doi]  [abs]
  6. James, SA. "Epidemiologic research on health disparities: some thoughts on history and current developments.." Epidemiologic reviews 31 (Winter, 2009): 1-6. [19822533], [doi]  [abs]
  7. James, SA; Van Hoewyk, J; Belli, RF; Strogatz, DS; Williams, DR; Raghunathan, TE. "Life-course socioeconomic position and hypertension in African American men: the Pitt County Study.." American journal of public health 96.5 (May, 2006): 812-817. [16571689], [doi]  [abs]

Highlight:
Sherman A. James is the Susan B. King Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University. He also held secondary professorships, at Duke, in Sociology, Community and Family Medicine, and African and African American Studies. Prior to Duke, 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), Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, and a Senior Research Scientist in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research.

Dr. James was awarded the A.B. degree (Psychology and Philosophy) in 1964 from Talladega College (AL), and the PhD degree (Psychology) in 1973 from Washington University in St. Louis. His research focuses on the social determinants of US racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health and health care. He is the originator of the John Henryism Hypothesis which posits that repeated high-effort coping with chronic social and economic adversity rooted in structural racism is an important factor in the early onset of hypertension and related cardiovascular diseases in African Americans.

Dr. James was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly 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; a Health Policy Investigator Award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2008; the John Cassel Distinguished Lecture and Award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research in 2013; the Wade Hampton Frost Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association for career contributions to the field of epidemiology in 2016; the Kenneth J. Rothman Career Accomplishment Award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research in 2019; and a residential fellowship at the Stanford University Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in 2019-2019.

Dr. James is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the American Epidemiological Society, the American College of Epidemiology, the American Heart Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. In 2007-08, he served as president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, the largest professional society of epidemiologists in the world. 


Bio/Profile
Sherman A. James is the Susan B. King Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University. Prior to joining the Duke faculty, 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), Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, 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 disparities in health and health care. He is the originator of the John Henryism Hypothesis which posits that repetitive high-effort coping with difficult social and economic stressors is a major contributor to racial and socioeconomic disparities in hypertension and related cardiovascular diseases.

Dr. James was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) 000. 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;. In 2016, he received the Wade Hampton Frost lecture and Award from the Epidemiology Section of the American Public Health Association. Also, in 2016, he was elected to the American Academy of Political and Social Science as the Mahatma Gandhi Fellow. In 2018-2019, he was a resident Fellow at Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. And, in 2019, he received the Kenneth Rothman Career Accomplishment Award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research. He is an elected 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 served as president of the Society for Epidemiologic Research. A social epidemiologist, Dr. James received his PhD (Psychology) from Washington University in St. Louis (1973), and in 2008, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of Washington University.

Current Ph.D. Students   (Former Students)

  • Wei He  
  • Julius Wilder  
  • Debbie Barrington  
  • Edna Viruell-Fuentes  
  • JoLynn Pratt  
  • Kyunghee Bae  
  • Amy Curtis  
  • Amy Sullivan  
  • Jay Kaufman  
  • Alice Furomoto-Dawson  
  • Ralph Caraballo  
  • Rosalind Carter  
  • Dorothy Faulkner  
  • Antonio Lopes  
  • Beatrice Zurita  
  • Julie Gazmararian  
  • Patricia Dargent-Molina  
  • David Strogatz  
  • Janet Meininger  
  • Suezanne Orr  

Sherman A. James