Rebekah Israel Cross

Rebekah Israel Cross is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago's Department of Public Health Sciences. Her work lies at the intersection of structural inequality, racism, and health outcomes with particular focus on housing discrimination, residential segregation, and maternal health disparities. Prior to her current position, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and earned her PhD in Community Health Sciences from UCLA with a minor in Urban Planning.

Her research agenda combines Critical Race Theory with quantitative and qualitative methodologies to analyze how systemic racism shapes population health. She has developed innovative frameworks for measuring racism's impact through housing policy and medical tools while exposing how racialized systems perpetuate health inequities. Her teaching philosophy emphasizes co-learning, student well-being, and anti-bias practices, with particular attention to ungrading and radical pedagogy.

Rebekah's recent publications focus on causal relationships between gentrification and preterm birth among Black populations, while her methodological work challenges the biological fallacy of race in medical calculators like VBAC prediction tools. She has received multiple fellowships including the Health Policy Research Scholars Award and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation support. Her advocacy extends beyond academia through public writing about Black maternal health, Palestinian solidarity, and personal resilience.