Research News

Cook Center Core Faculty Keisha L. Bentley-Edwards recently published a paper in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (JREHD) that details how, while racial discrimination leads to negative cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk among African American women and men, religious coping may be a fruitful mechanism for mitigating these negative effects. Dr. Bentley-Edwards, the Associate…

Cook Center DITE Fellow Joaquin Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba recently published a paper in the American Economic Association’s (AEA) Paper and Proceedings that details how local law enforcement agencies in North Carolina, under the threat of federal scrutiny, shifted their racially discriminatory policing practices. Rubalcaba, an assistant professor in the Carolina Population Center at the University of North…

Cook Center Affiliate Imari Smith published a paper in Social Science & Medicine on Racial and Gender Differences in Discrimination and Psychological Distress among Young Adults. Smith, doctoral candidate in the Duke University’s Joint Program in Sociology and Public Policy, was the lead author on the paper, which sheds light on the understudied negative effects…

Faculty Affiliate Dr. Lisa Gennetian published a paper in Nature that studies the effects of monthly cash transfers to low-income households. Gennetian, the Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies at the Sanford School for Public Policy, was the lead author on the paper, which found that families who received substantial cash transfers during the…

Research Affiliate Dr. Eric Griffith published a paper on the relation between religion/spirituality and the rates of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) among Black people in the United States, finding that those who never attended religious services had significantly higher odds of being diagnosed with ADRD than those who attended services more than once…

Cook Center research was featured in Inequality.org Op-Ed on the Racial Wealth Gap. Senior Associate in Research and Communications Strategist Amber Holland takes readers through the work of Cook Center researchers to address questions about the Racial Wealth Gap and debunk common myths in their new study “Setting the Record Straight on Racial Wealth Inequality”….

At the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, Juneteenth holds profound significance as we reflect on the prolonged journey to freedom for enslaved individuals. Established as a scholarly collaborative dedicated to studying and remedying inequalities, the Cook Center recognizes Juneteenth not only as a pivotal moment in American history but also…

Three collaborators at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center for Social Equity at Duke University have published a new paper showing that the modern racial wealth gap is in fact growing, in large part because of the cumulative impact of the country’s racial history, and intergenerational transfers of wealth from older generations to younger ones. “When…

Cook Center Associate Director of Research, Dr. Keisha Bentley-Edwards, has co-authored a research article in PLOS ONE titled, “Homophily and social mixing in a small community: Implications for infectious disease transmission“. Dr. Bentley-Edwards and her co-authors explored how people in a small, diverse community interact and what this means for the spread of diseases like…

Faculty Affiliate Sarah Elizabeth Gaither, PhD, the Nicholas J. and Theresa M. Leonardy Associate Professor Psychology & Neuroscience at Duke University, has recently coauthored a paper titled “Testing intergroup contact theory through a natural experiment of randomized college roommate assignments in the United States.” The findings, recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest that…