Amani Nuru-Jeter

Amani M. Nuru-Jeter is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, where she serves as Executive Associate Dean. Her research focuses on racial and socioeconomic health disparities, the measurement of racism as a social determinant of health, and the biological embedding of social stressors.

• BS in Biology/Neurophysiology, University of Maryland, College Park (1995)
• MPH in Maternal and Child Health, George Washington University (1998)
• PhD in Health and Social Policy/Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins University (2003)
• Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar, University of California, San Francisco/Berkeley (2005)

Dr. Nuru-Jeter’s work integrates epidemiology, social sciences, and biomedical methods to examine how race, gender, and socioeconomic position shape health inequities across populations, places, and lifespans. She employs mixed methods to study social exposures like racism stress, neighborhood segregation, and income inequality, linking them to cardiometabolic risk, biological dysregulation, and cellular aging.

Her research includes the African American Women’s Heart & Health Study (PI), the Bay Area Heart Health Study (Co-Investigator), and collaborations on the Jackson Heart Study. She emphasizes the psychobiological pathways through which racism affects health outcomes and advocates for structural interventions to address systemic inequities.

• Named Editor’s Choice for research on racial discrimination and biological dysregulation in Psychoneuroendocrinology
• Extensively featured in media outlets like NPR, The Guardian, and San Francisco Chronicle
• Honored for teaching excellence and graduate student mentoring

As Principal Investigator of the HEARTs Research Group, she leads interdisciplinary efforts to study race-related stress, weathering, and the intersectionality of race, gender, and socioeconomic position. Her team includes postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and affiliated labs like the Health Equity Research Lab and Big Data for Health Equity Group.