Professional Summary
Arline T. Geronimus is a Professor in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and a Research Professor in the Population Studies Center at the Institute for Social Research. She is also affiliated with the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health. Dr. Geronimus received her undergraduate degree in Political Theory from Princeton University, her doctorate in Behavior Sciences from the Harvard School of Public Health, and did post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Geronimus developed an analytic framework, "weathering" that posits that the health of African Americans is subject to early health deterioration as a consequence of social exclusion; much of her scholarly work is related to developing and testing this framework. Her general research interests include structural and cultural influences on population variation in family structure and age-at-first birth; the effects of poverty, institutionalized discrimination, and aspects of residential areas on health; the collective strategies marginalized communities employ to mitigate, resist, or undo the harmful effects of poverty and structural racism on their health; and the perturbations public policies sometimes cause in these autonomous protections. Dr. Geronimus chairs the HBHE Doctoral Committee and directs doctoral training in Public Health Demography at the Population Studies Center. She has worked with the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the Aspen Institute's Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives to revitalize American cities.
Courses Taught
HBEHED614: Women's Health and the Timing of Reproduction
HBEHED693: Seminar on Health and Poverty
HBEHED810: Special Topics in Health Behavior and Health Education
Education
Sc.D., Behavioral Sciences, Harvard University School of Public Health, 1985
A.B., Politics, Princeton University, 1977
Research Interest & Projects
Weathering -- causes, impact, and implications from the cellular to the policy level
Social construction of teenage childbearing as a public health or social problem
Urban/rural differences in health among high poverty populations in the U.S.
Impact of social ideologies and public policies on the health of marginalized groups
Selected Publications
Geronimus, A.T., Hicken, M., Keene, D., & Bound, J. (In Press). Age-patterns of allostatic load scores among Blacks and Whites in the United States: Might allostatic load algorithms measure weathering? American Journal of Public Health
Geronimus A.T. and Thompson J.P. (2004). To Denigrate, Ignore, or Disrupt: The Health Impact of Policy-induced Breakdown of Urban African American Communities of Support. Du Bois Review, 1(2), 247-279.
Geronimus, A. T (2003). Damned if You Do: Culture, Identity, Privilege and Teenage Childbearing in the United States. Social Science and Medicine, 57, 881-893.
Geronimus, A.T. (2001). Understanding and Eliminating Racial Inequalities in Women's Health in the United States: The Role of the Weathering Conceptual Framework. Journal of the American Medical Women's Association, 56(4), 133-136.
Geronimus, A. T., Bound, J., Waidmann, T. A., Colen, C. G., & Steffick, D. (2001). Inequality in Life Expectancy, Functional Status, and Active Life Expectancy Across Selected Black and White Population in the United States. Demography, 38(2), 227-251.
Geronimus, A. T. (2000). To Mitigate, Resist, or Undo: Addressing Structural Influences on the Health of Urban Population. American Journal of Public Health, 90, 867-872.
Geronimus, A.T., Bound J., and Waidmann, T.A. (1999). Health Inequality and Population Variation in Fertility-Timing. Social Science and Medicine, 49(12), 1623-1636.
Professional Affiliations
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator in Health Policy
American Public Health Association
Population Association of America
American Society for Applied Anthropology
Charter Member: National Center for Minority Health
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