Neighborhoods and Health

Dustin T. Duncan, ScD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Health at the New York University School of Medicine, where he directs the NYU Spatial Epidemiology Lab. As a social and spatial epidemiologist, he studies how specific neighborhood characteristics influence population health and health disparities. His work includes applying emerging geospatial technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and smart phones to, in part, examine mobility and social networks in neighborhoods. Dr. Duncan completed his doctorate and the Alonzo Smythe Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship, both in social epidemiology, at the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Ichiro Kawachi, MD, PhD, is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Social Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Social & Behavioral Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1992. He has previously co-edited Behavioral Economics and Public Health, Social Epidemiology, Globalization and Health, and the Oxford Handbook of Public Health Practice, all published by Oxford University Press. Kawachi lectures about social epidemiology through the Harvard University Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) platform, edX. His course, "Health and Society" (PHx 201), is a version of the class that he has taught for twenty years at Harvard. In 2013-1014, 35,000 students from all over the world were enrolled in the MOOC course.