David R. Williams

Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health and chair of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

2022 Hansen Award Distinguished Lecture
“Understanding and Effectively Addressing Inequities in Health”
Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022
12:30 p.m.

About the Speaker

David R. Williams is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health and chair of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Williams, also a professor of African and African American studies and sociology at Harvard University, is an internationally recognized authority on social influences on health. His research has enhanced understanding of the ways in which race, socioeconomic status, stress, racism, health behavior, and religious involvement can affect physical and mental health. The Everyday Discrimination Scale that he developed is the most widely used measure of discrimination in health studies.

Williams is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, he was ranked as one of the top 10 Most Cited Social Scientists in the world and as the Most Cited Black Scholar in the Social Sciences, worldwide, in 2008. In 2014, Thomson Reuters ranked him as one of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. He currently serves on the board of Trustees of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and on the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Solidarity Council on Racial Equity.

He has served on numerous federal advisory committees, testified at Congressional briefings, and participated in National Academy of Medicine committees, including the committee that prepared the Unequal Treatment report. He has also played a visible leadership role in raising awareness of the problem of health inequities and identifying interventions to address them. This includes his service as the staff director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America and as a key scientific advisor to the award-winning PBS film series, Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?