Kim Blankenship MA, PhD

Kim M. Blankenship, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Sociology, Founding Director of the Center on Health, Risk, and Society (housed in the Department of Sociology), Associate Dean of Research in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Co-Director of the Developmental Core of the District of Columbia Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR). She previously served on the faculty of Sociology at Duke University and at the Duke Global Health Institute (2008-2010) and on the faculty at Yale University, where she was also Associate Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (1998-2008). Research and publications focus on the social determination of health inequities and structural interventions to address them. She has received funding from NIDA, NIMH, CDC, Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Most recently she was PI on an NIMH-funded project that focuses on the intersecting impacts of mass incarceration, housing vulnerability, and housing policies in the US -- all contemporary systems promoting race, class, and gender inequality -- as they shape HIV-related sexual practices; and Co-PI (with Danya Keene) on a study funded by Russell Sage Foundation examining the health consequences associated with the provision of housing in low-income race segregated neighborhoods. She is also a Co-investigator on an NIDDK study (PI Danya Keene) on the impacts of rental assistance on biological and behavioral indicators of diabetes self-management and control, She leads the Inequality, Social Justice, and Health Lab at AU.