COURTNEY S. THOMAS

My name is Courtney Sinclair Thomas and I am a doctoral candidate and a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow in the Sociology department at Vanderbilt University. I received my B.S. in Psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2010 and my M.A. in Sociology from Vanderbilt in 2013. I have successfully completed two comprehensive exams during my graduate career: Race, Class, Gender, as well as Social Psychology and Mental Health (with distinction).

 

Enduring racial and socioeconomic disparities in health have been the focus of public health and social science research for decades. My work utilizes a sociological lens to investigate these critical issues. Specifically, I examine the ways in which race intersects with other systems of inequality such as gender and social class to affect health, well-being, and quality of life within various populations. This research interest is expressed through three main areas—the examination of factors contributing to black-white disparities in pregnancy, research on the contribution of stress to health outcomes, and the investigation of race-related stressors among black Americans.