Research News

Research Affiliate Dr. Eric Griffith published a paper on the relation between religion/spirituality and the rates of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) among Black people in the United States, finding that those who never attended religious services had significantly higher odds of being diagnosed with ADRD than those who attended services more than once […]

Cook Center research was featured in Inequality.org Op-Ed on the Racial Wealth Gap. Senior Associate in Research and Communications Strategist Amber Holland takes readers through the work of Cook Center researchers to address questions about the Racial Wealth Gap and debunk common myths in their new study “Setting the Record Straight on Racial Wealth Inequality”. […]

By: Rachel Ruff At the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, Juneteenth holds profound significance as we reflect on the prolonged journey to freedom for enslaved individuals. Established as a scholarly collaborative dedicated to studying and remedying inequalities, the Cook Center recognizes Juneteenth not only as a pivotal moment in American […]

Three collaborators at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center for Social Equity at Duke University have published a new paper showing that the modern racial wealth gap is in fact growing, in large part because of the cumulative impact of the country’s racial history, and intergenerational transfers of wealth from older generations to younger ones. “When […]

Cook Center Associate Director of Research, Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards, has co-authored a research article in PLOS ONE titled, “Homophily and social mixing in a small community: Implications for infectious disease transmission“. Dr. Bentley-Edwards and her co-authors explored how people in a small, diverse community interact and what this means for the spread of diseases like […]

Faculty Affiliate Sarah Elizabeth Gaither, PhD, the Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy Associate Professor Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, has recently coauthored a paper titled “Testing intergroup contact theory through a natural experiment of randomized college roommate assignments in the United States.” The findings, recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest that […]

Visiting Faculty Monica Garcia-Perez, PhD, is the Guest Editor of the May 2024 special health equity edition of the American Journal of Health Economics. The issue was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and the disparities that affect access to health care, quality of care, and final health outcomes. The issue features five papers that focus […]

Faculty Affiliate Loneke Blackmann Carr, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Connecticut, recently published a paper titled “Black Feminism and Womanism: A Narrative Review of the Weight Loss Literature” The paper, published in Ethnicity & Disease, is a systematic review that employs Black Feminism and Womanism to examine […]

Faculty Affiliate Dr. Nancy MacLean, the William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, is a participant in two recently-funded, multi-year grant projects to address the escalating attacks from the political right on education at all levels. First, the Mellon Foundation has funded the creation of a sizable Center for […]

Cook Center Faculty Affiliate Dr. Omer Ali, an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh, recently received a grant (with his colleagues Randall Walsh and Andreas Ferrara) from the Russell Sage Foundation. Under the grant category of “Social, Political, and Economic Inequality”, Dr. Ali and his colleagues will examine how historical mortgage insurance […]