Professor and Chair vmkeith@uab.edu
Heritage Hall 460H
(205) 934-8677

Research and Teaching Interests: Health inequalities, Stressors and health, Social demography, Race/ethnicity

Office Hours: By appointment

Education:

• BS, University of Central Arkansas, Sociology
• MA, University of Kentucky, Sociology
• PhD, University of Kentucky, Sociology

My teaching and research interests focus on social inequality and health. My interest in the general area of social inequality is a product of my early graduate training in social demography. During my doctoral studies, I worked on projects that emphasized race, social class, and gender differences in rural-urban migration, labor force participation, and attitudes toward public policy. After completing post-doctoral studies at the University of Michigan in the School of Public Health, my research coalesced around inequalities in health with a particular emphasis on understanding the relationship between social hierarchies (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, SES) and health outcomes.

My work is positioned in both sociology and multidisciplinary areas such as public health, social work, and social psychology. Over the course of my career I have collaborated with researchers and students from these and other areas to investigate a broad array of topics. These include studies of health risk and protective factors associated with stressful life circumstances such as financial burden, race-based unfair treatment, and even exposure to weather disasters. Currently, I and my associates are pursuing a series of studies that evaluate the extent to which race/ethnicity disparities in health are similar or different depending on the measure of race/ethnicity used. This involves, for example, contrasting classifications based on self-identification and those based on the relative lightness and darkness of skin complexion.

I have held several administrative positions but still teach and supervise the research projects of both undergraduate and graduate students. At various universities, I have taught courses such as Social Problems, Social Demography, Medical Sociology, African Americans in U.S. Society, the Sociology of Mental Health, and Social Disparities in Health. I look forward to working with students here at UAB as we explore the social world together.

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