Yvette Cozier featured on The Best of Our Knowledge

As always, host Bob Barrett selects an Academic Minute to air during The Best of Our Knowledge.

Each week this program examines some of the issues unique to college campuses, looks at the latest research, and invites commentary from experts and administrators from all levels of education.

For this week‘s edition (#1317), Bob has selected Yvette Cozier‘s segment that explores racism and obesity. Yvette Cozier is an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University.

Dr. Cozier is an investigator on the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS), a prospective follow-up of over 59,000 African American women begun in 1995. Dr. Cozier’s overall research focus is on the influence of psychosocial factors in the development of sarcoidosis, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.  She has published several analyses of perceived racism in relation to hypertension, breast cancer incidence, weight gain, and mortality in the BWHS.  In addition, she has published analyses of neighborhood socioeconomic status, including median household income and segregation, on the risks of hypertension, and diabetes.  For the past several years, Dr. Cozier has been studying selected risk factors for sarcoidosis in the BWHS, including reproductive factors and genetic polymorphisms.  She has also assessed the role of attitudes about spirituality and religiosity in health promotion and disease prevention efforts among Boston-area residents and clergy.

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