ORWH’s new quarterly lecture series, titled “Diverse Voices: Intersectionality and the Health of Women,” will amplify research that incorporates an intersectional framework and addresses the breadth of topics relevant to the health of women. The March 31, 2022, session of “Diverse Voices: Intersectionality and the Health of Women” will focus on environmental exposures and disparities in pregnancy outcomes, featuring presentations from Drs. Tamarra James-Todd and Mahasin Mujahid.

Dr. James-Todd will provide an environmental justice framework and present on the role of exposure assessment in understanding disparities in reproductive health outcomes. Dr. Mujahid will present on historical redlining, disparities in severe maternal morbidity in marginalized groups, and the Enhancing Recruitment and Retention of Underrepresented Pregnant Hispanic Women Phase III Randomized Clinical Trial. Together, the talks will provide a forum to increase awareness of social determinants of maternal health and to discuss community-based maternity care models that integrate exposure assessments into health equity intervention programming.  

Videocast

Tamarra James-Todd, Ph.D.
Assoc. Professor of Environmental Reproductive Epidemiology, 
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Tamarra James-Todd is an environmental reproductive epidemiologist, who  directs the Environmental Reproductive Justice (ERJ) Lab that seeks to investigate and improve adverse environmental exposure and reproductive health disparities. Her work particularly focuses on the importance of pregnancy as a sensitive window of environmental chemical exposures. She is the Principal Investigator (PI) for the Community Engagement Core of a P42 Superfund Research Center and two National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ funded R01 grants, focusing on endocrine disrupting chemicals and adverse maternal health outcomes during pregnancy, postpartum, and mid-life in the ERGO study and Project Viva. Dr. James-Todd has served on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board and the March of Dimes Environmental Justice Working Group. She is a past Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women's Health K12 Scholar.
 

Mahasin Mujahid Ph.D., M.S., FAHA
Assoc. Professor of Epidemiology,
University of California (UC) Berkeley School of Public Health

Dr. Mahasin S. Mujahid conducts research in social epidemiology. She examines neighborhood health effects, cardiovascular health disparities, and racial/ethnic health inequities over the life course. Dr. Mujahid is a Lillian and Dudley Aldous Chair in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, and a Fellow of the American Heart Association. She is currently the PI of the Social Determinants Core for RURAL, a longitudinal cohort study focusing on the heart and lung health of a diverse sample of adults living in rural counties in Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta. Her research has been funded by both NIH and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Mujahid is the Director of the MPH Program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She has received several honors from UC Berkeley, including the Distinguished Faculty Mentor and the Committee on Teaching Excellence Awards.