Jaime Booth

Jaime Booth, Ph.D., MSW, serves as Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. Her scholarship partners with youth to investigate structural and interpersonal racism through computational social science methodologies, focusing on how activity spaces influence stress processes and health disparities among Black adolescents.

Dr. Booth's research integrates Computational Social Science, Digital Literacy, and Archiving to examine neighborhood effects on health disparities, technology-driven measurement of community dynamics, and immigration's impact on Latinx adolescent health. She pioneers ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and social media analysis to capture real-time stress experiences across activity spaces, moving beyond traditional neighborhood studies to isolate contextual effects on psychological distress and substance use.

Her publication portfolio reveals a consistent trajectory in developing community-centered technological interventions, with increasing emphasis on digital humanities approaches to address racism and violence exposure. Recent work demonstrates sophisticated integration of spatial analysis with longitudinal behavioral data to model how Black youth navigate safety and support systems.

Dr. Booth's scientific recognition includes:

• Association of Community Organizing and Social Action Emerging Scholar Award (2017)
• Society for Social Work Research’s Deborah K. Padgett Early Career Achievement Award (2020)

She directs multiple externally funded initiatives including the NIDA-supported SPIN Project (intensive longitudinal study of Black youth activity spaces), GetSafe (community violence recovery with Adolescent Medicine), and NSF's DATA project (youth-developed learning platform). Her HYPE Media program exemplifies community-partnered digital literacy intervention development.

Dr. Booth maintains active interdisciplinary collaborations across the University of Pittsburgh, particularly with the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, and co-leads community-academic partnerships focused on developing technology-enabled interventions for youth empowerment and structural change.