About

We are an interdisciplinary research team that includes historians, sociologists, psychologists, epidemiologists, and statisticians who bring together expertise in historical and contemporary racial violence and control, air pollution and environmental justice, epigenomics, and population health to study the link between cultural and structural racism and population health inequities. We bring together critical theories on cultural and structural racism from the humanities and innovative potential biological mechanisms from the bench and medical sciences to better understand the root causes of racial inequities in population health.

Our Leadership

Margaret T. Hicken

Landscapes Lab Director, Principal Investigator, structural racism and health

About Margaret

Through her entire research program, Margaret Hicken is committed to clarifying the social causes and biological mechanisms linking racial group membership to renal and cardiovascular disease inequalities. The major hallmark of Hicken’s research is the integration of scientific knowledge from diverse disciplines, as this transdisciplinary approach to research allows for creative and innovative insights into the root causes and mechanisms of the seemingly intractable racial health inequalities. A significant portion of her research program falls at the intersection of sociology, geography, and environmental toxicology, examining the interrelated roles of racial residential segregation, neighborhood disadvantage, environmental hazards, and racial health inequalities.

Hedy Lee

Co-Investigator, structural racism and health

About Hedy

Hedwig (Hedy) Lee is broadly interested in the social determinants and consequences of population health and health disparities, with a particular focus on race/ethnicity, poverty, race-related stress, and the family.

Hedy received her PhD in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2009. After receiving her PhD, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Michigan from 2009 to 2011. She holds a courtesy joint appointment at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at WUSTL and is a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is also an Associate Director of the Center for Race, Ethnicity & Equity. She currently serves on the research advisory board for the Vera Institute of Justice and the board for the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. She is also a member of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, Committee on Population. Her recent work examines the impact of structurally rooted chronic stressors, such as mass incarceration, on health and health disparities.