Taylor Hargrove, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Sociology | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC, UNITED STATES
Areas of expertise: Health disparities across the life course, focusing on the consequences of race, skin color, gender, and social class.
Biography
Taylor W. Hargrove's research seeks to uncover and explain the development of health disparities across the life course, focusing on the consequences of race, skin color, gender, and social class. Her work addresses both between-group inequalities in health as well as sources of heterogeneity within groups that differentiate pathways to health. She is currently engaged in research that explores linkages among neighborhood contexts, individual-level characteristics, and biological measures of health in early adulthood.
Dr. Hargrove's primary research areas of interest are race, aging and the life course, and the social stratification of health. Her program of research examines how and why social inequalities in health unfold across the life course, and is guided by three overarching questions: To what extent do race, skin color, gender, and social class combine to shape health at different stages of life? How do pathways to health and aging differ among members of broadly defined social groups? What are the contextual, psychosocial, and biological mechanisms underlying health inequality? She is currently engaged in research that explores linkages among neighborhood contexts, individual-level characteristics, and biological measures of health in early adulthood. The goal of this work is to elucidate how macro-level environments shape the consequences of social statuses on more proximate causes of poor health. One project, for example, seeks to explore the biological and social mechanisms that may diminish the health benefits of socioeconomic resources for particular social groups in the US. Hargrove plans to continue this line of research in efforts to help elucidate the pathways through which social factors 'get under our skin' to shape health and undergird social stratification.
Industry Expertise (2)
Education/Learning
Research
Areas of Expertise (4)
Aging and the Life Course
Population Health
Racial/Ethnic, Gender, and Skin Tone Stratification
Health disparities by race and ethnicity
Education (3)
Vanderbilt University: Ph.D., Sociology 2016
Vanderbilt University: M.A., Sociology 2013
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: B.A., Psychology 2011
Affiliations (3)
- American Sociological Association
- Population Association of America
- Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science
Links (2)
Articles (3)
Light privilege? Skin tone stratification in health among African Americans
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Taylor W Hargrove
2019-07-01
"Skin tone is a status characteristic used in society to evaluate and rank the social position of minorities. Although skin color represents a particularly salient dimension of race, its consequences for health remains unclear."
The Depths of Despair Among US Adults Entering Midlife
American Journal of Public Health
Lauren Gaydosh, Robert A Hummer, Taylor W Hargrove, Carolyn T Halpern, Jon M Hussey, Eric A Whitsel, Nancy Dole, Kathleen Mullan Harris
2019-05-01
"To test whether indicators of despair are rising among US adults as they age toward midlife and whether this rise is concentrated among low-educated Whites and in rural areas."
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2019.305002
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
Taylor W Hargrove
2018-12-01
"This study addresses three research questions critical to understanding if and how skin color shapes health among African Americans: (1) Does skin color predict trajectories of body mass index (BMI) among African Americans across ages 32 to 55? (2) To what extent is this relationship contingent on gender? (3) Do sociodemographic, psychosocial, and behavioral factors explain the skin color–BMI relationship?"
Social