Our Faculty

An assistant professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Dr. Naa Oyo Kwate works at the forefront of research on the psychological and sociological influences that affect the health behavior and outcomes of African-Americans. Lauded for both her outstanding classroom teaching and interdisciplinary research, since joining the Mailman School in 2004, Dr. Kwate has established herself among the School’s deep core of accomplished junior faculty.

Trained as a clinical psychologist, her early work focused on the cultural context of mental health practice, particularly with African-American populations. Her clinical work in New York City was eye-opening in revealing the extent of morbidity among African-American and Latino children and families. This led her to postdoctoral work in cancer prevention and subsequently to Mailman, as Principal Investigator on her first project, funded by the Breast Cancer Research Program at the Department of Defense. Findings from this study of individual- and neighborhood-level determinants of alcohol intake have been published in a number of journals. Most recently, with co-author with Ilan Meyer, PhD, associate professor of clinical Sociomedical Sciences, she published the first study to show that outdoor alcohol advertising is associated with problem drinking among African-American women. Appearing in the American Journal of Public Health, the study found that “on average, exposure to each alcohol ad in a woman’s residential block was associated with a 13% increase in the odds of being a problem drinker,” according to Dr. Kwate. (Read more about this study)

In 2007 Dr. Kwate continued to investigate neighborhood context as Principal Investigator on two projects, both of which employ GIS. In “When does place matter? Racial segregation, neighborhood perceptions, and health status among African Americans”, funded by Columbia University’s Vice Provost for Diversity Initiative (Research Fellowship) she sought to identify some of the factors that mediate the relationship between living in a racially segregated neighborhood and health status, and to explore the extent to which residents in predominantly Black neighborhoods access goods, services, and social contacts throughout the city. “Studying Spatial Associations Between the Density of Schools and the Density of Fast Food Outlets”, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF) New Connections and Healthy Eating Research Programs, is an investigation of the food environments around schools, and how these are shaped by student and neighborhood demographic characteristics.

Most recently Dr. Kwate, along with Dr. Meyer, received the coveted RWJF Investigator Award in Health Policy. As described by the RWJF, “The program provides one of the few funding opportunities in the United States for investigator-initiated projects that are broad in scope, innovative in approach, and have national policy relevance.” For the project “On the content of our character: The myth of meritocracy and African American health”, Dr. Kwate joins the ranks of outstanding, generally senior, investigators who are grant recipients. The project will investigate whether, why, and when belief in the American Dream is a negative health determinant for African Americans across historical and geographical contexts.

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