Dr. David R. Williams is the Florence and Laura Norman Professor of Public Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University.
His first six years as a faculty member were at Yale University where he held appointments in both Sociology and Public Health. He is an internationally recognized authority on social influences on health.
His research has focused on trends and determinants of socioeconomic and racial disparities in health, the effects of racism on health and the ways in which religious involvement can affect health. He is the author of more than 150 scholarly papers in scientific journals and edited collections and his research has appeared in leading journals in sociology, psychology, medicine, public health and epidemiology.
He has been involved in the development of health policy at the national level in the U.S. He has served on the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and on six panels for the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Williams has also played a visible, national leadership role in raising awareness levels of the problem of health disparities and identifying interventions to address them.