Advisory Committee

James S. Jackson (1944-2020)

Founding Director

Research Professor, Research Center for Group Dynamics
Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology

M.A., Psychology, 1970, University of Toledo
Ph.D., Social Psychology, 1972, Wayne State University

More about James Jackson

Research efforts include conducting national and international surveys of black populations focusing on racial and ethnic influences on life course development, attitude change, reciprocity, social support, physical and mental health and coping. Jackson is currently principal investigator of one of the most extensive social, political, economic, and mental and physical health studies of the African American and Caribbean populations ever conducted, “The National Survey of American Life” and the “The Family Survey across Generations and Nations,” and the “National Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Politics.” Teaching centers on social factors in health, race and racism, and social exchange and social influences.

Cleopatra Howard Caldwell

Chair and Professor, Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health
Director, Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health
Faculty Associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, ISR

B.S., Psychology, 1973, North Carolina A & T State University
MA, Human Development, 1975, Wayne State University
M.A., Psychology, 1983, University of Michigan
Ph.D., Social Psychology, 1986, University of Michigan

[email protected]

More about Cleopatra Howard Caldwell

Dr. Cleopatra Howard Caldwell is Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education and Director of the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture, and Health (CRECH) at the School of Public Health, University of Michigan. She is also a Faculty Associate with the Program for Research on Black Americans (PRBA) at the Institute for Social Research and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. As a social psychologist with expertise in psychosocial and environmental factors influencing the health and well-being of Black populations, her research includes both intervention and basic research involving survey research techniques with adults, adolescents and families. She also has expertise in conducting community-based participatory research (CBPR), developing academic-community partnerships to design and evaluate health interventions for Black youth and their family. Specific examples include the NICHD/NIH funded Parenting and Men’s Health Study, the CDC funded Fathers and Sons Evaluation Project, and the Ruth Mott Foundation funded Fathers and Sons Physical Activity and Nutrition Program. She has published in a number of areas including the influence of social relationships and social identities on the health and well-being of Black adolescents, the role of paternal support, racial discrimination, and racial identity attitudes as risk or protective factors for adolescent risky behaviors and fatherhood as a context for understanding men’s health. Further, Dr. Caldwell has extensive experience conducting research to understand health risk behaviors and mental health of ethnically diverse adolescents, including African American and Caribbean Black youth.

Harold W. Neighbors

Professor of Public Health
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Professor Emeritus of Public Health, University of Michigan School of Public Health
Research Professor Emeritus, Institute for Social Research.

Ph.D., Social Psychology 1982, University of Michigan
M.A., Social/Community Psychology, 1979, University of Michigan
B.A., Psychology, 1975, Haverford College

[email protected]

More about Harold W. Neighbors

Dr. Neighbors is an applied social psychologist with a methodological background in survey research. He has spent the bulk of his career writing on racial, ethnic, and gender disparities in mental health. He began is research career by studying the help-seeking behavior of Black Americans with serious personal problems. Later, Dr. Neighbors worked on the measurement of mental disorder in treatment settings and the general population. He has also studied the mental health implications of social mobility among Black Americans. In 2015, he left the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) to help build the Division of Public Health at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine (Flint). The purpose of this move was to bring medicine and public health closer together by training medical students in research on the social determinants of population health disparities. He also moved to Flint to conduct community-based lifestyle intervention research to improve the self-management of chronic disease among Black men. He is currently developing strategies to package research findings for those with the power to change the socioeconomic conditions that overpower individual effort.

Sela V. Panapasa

Associate Research Scientist, Program for Research on Black Americans

M.S., 1988, Computer Education, Johnson & Wales University
M.A., 1995, Sociology, Brown University
Ph.D., 2000, Sociology, Brown University

[email protected]

More about Sela V. Panapasa

Dr. Panapasa’s research interests are in the area of racial health disparities and population dynamics across the lifecourse. She conducts both survey driven and community-based research designs, and completed the first representative study on Pacific Islander American health and healthcare utilization. Dr. Panapasa also played a visible leadership role in raising awareness to the problems of health disparities among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders. Her work seeks to improve the health and well-being of numerically small vulnerable populations through evidence-based research and interventions, including efforts to build healthy Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities in the United States and U.S. Associated Pacific Islands. In her early research she studied social support and intergenerational exchanges among aged Pacific Peoples living in the U.S. and Pacific region. Dr. Panapasa currently serves as a member on the U.S. Census Bureau National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Advisory Committee on Minority Health and she recently completed her term as chair of the Census Advisory Committee on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders.

Robert J. Taylor

Director

Faculty Associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics
Harold R Johnson and Sheila Feld Collegiate Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work

B.A., Sociology, 1974, Northwestern University
M.S.W., 1976, University of Michigan
Ph.D., Social Work and Sociology, 1983, University of Michigan

[email protected]

More about Robert J. Taylor

Robert Joseph Taylor is the Harold R. Johnson Endowed Professor of Social Work and the Sheila Feld Collegiate Professor of Social Work. He is also the Director of the Program for Research on Black Americans at the Institute for Social Research. Professor Taylor has published extensively on the informal social support networks (i.e., family, friends, and church members) of adult and elderly Black Americans. An article by Thyer in Journal of Social Service Research finds that Robert Joseph Taylor is the #15 most influential social work faculty (out of 2204 faculty) based on H-index. An article by Kimberly Y. Huggins-Hoyt in the journal, Research on Social Work Practice, found that he was the #1 cited African American faculty member in the field of Social Work. Robert Joseph Taylor has been principal investigator of several grants from the National Institute on Aging that examine the role of religion in the lives of Black and White elderly adults. He has been co-principal investigator with James Jackson on several grants from the National Institute of Mental Health on the correlates of mental health and mental illness among Black Americans, including the only major national study of the prevalence of mental illness among Black Americans (The National Survey of American Life). He has edited two books, Family Life in Black America (1997) and Aging in Black America (1993) with James S. Jackson and Linda M. Chatters. He is also the lead author of the book, Religion in the Lives of African Americans: Social, Psychological, and Health Perspectives (2004) with Linda Chatters and Jeff Levin. He is the founding editor of African American Research Perspectives and has reviewed manuscripts for over 60 different journals. To date he has published over 175 peer review journal articles.

Philip Bowman

Phillip Bowman Faculty Associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, ISR
Professor, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education
Director, Diversity Research and Policy Program (DRPP)

BS, Psychology/Industrial Technology, 1970, Northern Arizona University
MA Counseling Psychology,1971, University of Michigan
EdS, Student Affairs in Higher Education,1973, University of Michigan
MA, Social Psychology, 1974,University of Michigan
PhD, Social Psychology, 1977,University of Michigan

[email protected]

More about Philip Bowman

Professor Bowman’s scholarship focuses on diversity issues in research methodology, higher education and public policy; social psychological issues in racial/ethnic disparities, and African American Studies. He is an active national and international lecturer and consultant on diversity issues in research methodology, higher education and public policy.

Linda M. Chatters

Paula Allen-Meares Collegiate Professor, School of Social Work
Professor, Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health
Faculty Associate, Research Center for Group Dynamics, ISR
University of Michigan

A.B., Psychology, 1975, University of California Berkeley
Ph.D., Psychology, 1983, University of Michigan

[email protected]

More about Linda M. Chatters

Dr. Chatters’ research focuses on adult development and aging in relation to the mental and physical health status and functioning of older persons in a variety of social contexts (i.e., the family, church, and community). She is also interested in religious involvement among African Americans and the independent effects of religious, personal, and social status factors on personal well-being. Dr. Chatters is a Fellow, Behavioral and Social Sciences Section of The Gerontological Society of America and the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. Dr. Chatters has also recently been designated by Thomson-ISI® as a Highly Cited Researcher™ in the Category of General Social Sciences.