Tyson H. Brown, PhD

Tyson H. Brown, PhD, is an assistant professor of sociology at Duke University and the director of the Center on Health & Society. He is also a senior fellow at the Duke University Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. During the 2019-2020 academic term, Brown is visiting at Oxford University. He was previously an assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University (VU) with a secondary appointment at VU’s Center for Medicine, Health and Society, and was a senior fellow at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Center for Health Policy. He earned his PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and did a NIH/NIA-funded postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University.

Brown’s program of research is focused on understanding how and why race/ethnicity intersects with other systems of inequality (e.g., gender, class, and nativity) to shape health and wealth across the life course. This research interest is expressed in three interrelated areas: 1) using multiple-hierarchy stratification approaches to investigate the intersecting consequences of social factors on health and wealth, 2) examining whether and why health and wealth inequality increase or decrease over the life course, and 3) determining the extent to which structural and psychosocial mechanisms (e.g., childhood and adult SES, chronic stress, discrimination, and neighborhood conditions) underlie health and wealth inequalities. His training and research has been supported, in part, by funding from the NIH, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Brown's RCMAR project was Understanding Racial/Ethnic Inequalities in Wealth Trajectories in Middle and Late Life: Patterns and Explanations.

Recent publications:

• Structural Racism and Health Stratification: Connecting Theory to Measurement
  Brown, T. H., & Homan, P. (2024). Structural racism and health stratification: Connecting theory to measurement. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 65(1), 141–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465231222924.
• “Racialized Health Inequities: Quantifying Socioeconomic and Stress Pathways Using Moderated Mediation.”
  Brown, T. H., Hargrove, T. W., Homan, P., & Adkins, D. E. (2023). Racialized health inequities: Quantifying socioeconomic and stress pathways using moderated mediation. Demography, 60(3), 675-705.
• “The Future of Social Determinants of Health: Looking Upstream to Structural Drivers.”
  Brown, T. H., & Homan, P. (2023). The future of social determinants of health: looking upstream to structural drivers. Milbank Quarterly, 101.