Paris Adkins-Jackson

Paris ("AJ") Adkins-Jackson is an epidemiologist, health equity researcher, and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences in the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York.^[1] She uses mixed methods combining qualitative and quantitative data to study community health and the role of structural racism on healthy aging.^[2]

Adkins-Jackson grew up in south central Los Angeles, the daughter of a musician.^[3] She attended Hamilton High School. She gained a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Humboldt State University in 2005, a Masters of Arts from California Institute of Integral Studies in cultural anthropology 2007, and a Masters of Public Health from Claremont Graduate University in 2012.^[1][4]

While she was a doctoral student in psychometrics at Morgan State University, she was named 2016 HBCU All-Star student by the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.^[5]

She gained her PhD in 2018 with a dissertation entitled, Examining the Validity of Self-care for Black Women: a Mixed Method Analysis.^[6][7] In 2021, she and her colleagues published a guide for epidemiologists and other researchers on measuring structural racism.^[8]

Adkins-Jackson has studied mistrust in clinical trial participation,^[9] and is studying how police violence and incarceration of incarcerations of Black and Latinx/a/o in mid-life may contribute to memory diseases in later life.^[10] She is also testing the effectiveness of an anti-racism intervention.^[1]

Adkins-Jackson is a board member of the Society for the Analysis African American Public Health Issues,^[11] and senior research fellow at the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity.^[12]