An expert on the health effects of coping to social and economic adversity is this year’s guest speaker at Washington University School of Medicine’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. program.
Sherman James, PhD is a social epidemiologist and a Research Professor of Epidemiology and African American Studies at Emory University.
James is the originator of the John Henryism hypothesis, which asserts that repetitive, “high-effort” coping with social and economic adversity is a major contributor to the well-known excess risk for hypertension and related cardiovascular diseases experienced by poor and working class African Americans. In support of his work, James received a five-year Research Career Development Award, followed by over 20 years of continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health to support his work on John Henryism.
For MLK Day, James will speak on “The Black Image in the White Mind: Implications for Achieving Racial Equity in America,” at 4 p.m. on Monday, January 18, 4 p.m. at the Eric P. Newman Education Center, located at 320 S. Euclid Ave.
James, a Distinguished Alumnus of Washington University (PhD, Psychology) retired from Duke University in 2014 as the Susan B. King Distinguished Professor of Public Policy. He also held professorships in Sociology, Community and Family Medicine, and African and African American Studies. Prior to Duke, James taught in the epidemiology departments at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the University of Michigan. At Michigan, he was the John P. Kirscht Collegiate Professor of Public Health, the Founding Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health (CRECH), Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, and a Senior Research Scientist in the Survey Research Center at the Institute for Social Research.
He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academy of Sciences, and has earned awards for career excellence in teaching epidemiology. He is a fellow of the American Epidemiological Society, the American College of Epidemiology, the American Heart Association, and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research. Last year, James was selected as a Mahatma Ghandi Fellow by the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
The lecture is open to the public and a reception follows. RSVP to attend by calling 314-362-6854 or emailing mpatterson@wustl.edu.
