Chloe E. Bird

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Senior Social Scientist; Professor, Pardee RAND Graduate School
Santa Monica Office

Education

Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; B.A. in sociology, Oberlin College

Overview

Biography

Chloe E. Bird is a senior sociologist at the RAND Corporation, where she studies gender differences in physical and mental health and social determinants of health, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She is principal investigator of a study of the impact of neighborhoods and behaviors on allostatic load and morbidity and of a study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of neighborhood effects on incident cardiovascular disease among women based on data from the Women's Health Initiative. In her book Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choice and Social Policies (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Bird and coauthor Patricia P. Rieker highlight promising new approaches to integrating biological and social research and provide examples of innovative developments that transcend the long-standing discipline-focused division of labor in the research community. Bird received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research Focus

Recent Projects

  • Women, Neighborhoods, and Coronary Heart Disease: A Perspective Study. The objective of the project is to examine the impact of neighborhood factors on women's development of CHD.
  • Neighborhoods, Behaviors, Allostatic Load, and Health. The study explores how neighborhood context affects and interacts with individual behavior and biology to determine health and disease.

Selected Publications

Lauren E. Hale, D. Phuong Do, Ricardo Basurto, Melonie Heron, Brian Karl Finch, Tamara Dubowitz, Nicole Lurie, and Chloe E. Bird, "Does Mental Health History Explain Gender Disparities in Insomnia Symptoms in Early Adulthood?" Sleep Medicine, 10(10):1118-23, 2009

Sharon Stein Merkin, Ricardo Basurto-Dávila, Arun Karlamangla, Chloe E. Bird, Nicole Lurie, José Escarce, Teresa Seeman, "Neighborhoods and Cumulative Biological Risk Profiles by Race/Ethnicity in a National Sample of U.S. Adults: NHANES III," Annals of Epidemiology, 19:194-201, 2009

Zora Djuric, Chloe E. Bird, Alice Furumoto-Dawson, Garth H. Rauscher, Mack T. Ruffin, Raymond P. Stowe, Katherine L. Tucker, and Christopher M. Masi, "Biological Markers of Psychological Stress in Health Disparities Research," Open Biomarkers Journal, 1:7-19, 2008

Do, D. Phuong, Brian Karl Finch, Ricardo Basurto-Davila, Chloe E. Bird, José J. Escarce, and Nicole Lurie, "Does Place Explain Racial Health Disparities? Quantifying the Contribution of Residential Context to the Black/White Health Gap in the United States," Social Science & Medicine, 67(8):1258-68, 2008

Chloe E. Bird, Patricia P. Rieker, Gender and Health: The effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies, Cambridge University Press, 2008

Tamara Dubowitz, Melonie Heron, Chloe E. Bird, Nicole Lurie, Brian Finch, Ricardo Basurto-Davila, Lauren Hale, and José Escarce, "Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status and Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Whites, Blacks, and Mexican–Americans in the United States," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 87:1883-91, 2008

Laurie T. Martin, Teague Ruder, José J. Escarce, Bonnie Ghosh-Dastidar, Daniel Sherman, Marc Elliott, Chloe E. Bird, Allen Fremont, Charles Gasper, Arthur Culbert, Nicole Lurie, "Developing Predictive Models of Health Literacy," Journal of General Internal Medicine, :In Press

Chloe E. Bird, Teresa Seeman, José J. Escarce, Ricardo Basurto-Davila, Brian Finch, Tamara Dubowitz, Melonie Heron, Lauren Hale, Sharon Stein Merkin, Margaret Weden, Nicole Lurie, "Neighbourhood Socioeconomic Status and Biological 'Wear & Tear' in a Nationally Representative Sample of US Adults," Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, :In Press

Honors & Awards

  • 2006 & 2009 Outstanding Abstract, AcademyHealth
  • 2006 Bellagio Collaborative Residency, with Patricia Rieker, Italy, Rockefeller Foundation
  • 1995 Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award, Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association

Recent Media Appearances

Interviews: U.S. News & World Report

Publications

Neighborhood Archetypes for Population Health Research: Is There No Place Like Home? - 2011

Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status and Cognitive Function in Women - 2011

Preventing Obesity and Its Consequences: Highlights of RAND Health Research - 2011

Racial/ethnic Differences in US Health Behaviors: A Decomposition Analysis - 2011

The Women's Health Initiative: The Food Environment, Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status, BMI, and Blood Pressure - 2011

A Prototype Interactive Mapping Tool to Target Low Health Literacy in Missouri - 2010

Ambient Particulate Matter Air Pollution and Venous Thromboembolism in the Women's Health Initiative Hormone Therapy Trials - 2010

Estimating and Mapping Health Literacy in the State of Missouri - 2010

Neighborhood Effects on Health: Concentrated Advantage and Disadvantage - 2010

Neighbourhood Socioeconomic Status and Biological 'Wear and Tear' in a Nationally Representative Sample of US Adults - 2010

Technical Detail and Appendices for a Study of Neighborhood Archetypes for Population Health Research - 2010

Developing Predictive Models of Health Literacy - 2009

Does Mental Health History Explain Gender Disparities in Insomnia Symptoms Among Young Adults? - 2009

How Are Residency Programs Preparing Our 21st Century Internists? A Review of Internal Medicine Residency Programs' Teaching on Selected Topics - 2009

Neighborhoods and Cumulative Biological Risk Profiles By Race/ethnicity in a National Sample of U.S. Adults: NHANES III - 2009

Age and Gender Differences in Medicare Expenditures and Service Utilization at the End of Life for Lung Cancer Decedents - 2008

Biomarkers of Psychological Stress in Health Disparities Research - 2008

Challenges for Multilevel Health Disparities Research in a Transdisciplinary Environment - 2008

Constrained Choice: Why Are Some Women and Men Able To Create and Maintain Healthy Lifestyles, While Others Are Not? - 2008

Do Neighborhood Economic Conditions Influence the Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables? - 2008

Does Place Explain Racial Health Disparities? Quantifying the Contribution of Residential Context to the Black/white Health Gap in the United States - 2008

Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choices and Social Policies - 2008

How a Therapy-Based Quality Improvement Intervention for Depression Affected Life Events and Psychological Well-Being Over Time: A 9-Year Longitudinal Analysis - 2008

Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status and Fruit and Vegetable Intake Among Whites, Blacks, and Mexican Americans in the United States - 2008

The Societal Promise of Improving Care for Depression: Nine Years Out - 2008

Age and Gender Differences in Medicare Expenditures at the End of Life for Colorectal Cancer Decedents - 2007

Differential Diffusion of HIV Technologies By Gender: The Case of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy - 2007

Does Quality of Care for Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Differ By Gender for Enrollees in Managed Care Plans? - 2007

Mental Health and Substance Abuse Issues Among People with HIV: Lessons from HCSUS - 2007

Neighborhood Context and Ethnicity Differences in Body Mass Index: A Multilevel Analysis Using the NHANES III Survey (1988-1994) - 2007

The Associations of Gender, Sexual Identity and Competing Needs with Healthcare Utilization Among People with HIV/AIDS - 2007

Does Patient-Provider Gender Concordance Affect Mental Health Care Received By Primary Care Patients with Major Depression? - 2006

Patterns and Correlates of Deliberate Abstinence Among Men and Women with HIV/AIDS - 2006

Rethinking Gender Differences in Health: Why We Need to Integrate Social and Biological Perspectives - 2005

The Association of Partner Abuse With Risky Sexual Behaviors Among Women and Men With HIV/AIDS - 2005

The Association of Partner Abuse with Risky Sexual Behaviors Among Women and Men with HIV/AIDS - 2005

Use of Geocoding in Managed Care Settings to Identify Quality Disparities - 2005

Differences in Medicare Expenditures During the Last 3 Years of Life - 2004

Do the Effects of Quality Improvement for Depression Care Differ for Men and Women? - 2004

Improving Women's Quality of Care for Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes: The Feasibility and Desirability of Stratified Reporting of Objective Performance Measures - 2003

Social Context and Adolescent Health Behavior: Does School-Level Smoking Prevalence Affect Students' Subsequent Smoking Behavior? - 2003

Age and Gender Differences in Health Care Utilization and Spending for Medicare Beneficiaries in Their Last Years of Life - 2002

Integrating Social and Biological Research to Improve Men's and Women's Health - 2002

Organization Supports for and Barriers to Part-Time Work Arrangements for Professionals: The Case of Radiology - 2002

Predictors of Contact with Public Service Sectors Among Homeless Adults with and Without Alcohol and Other Drug Disorders - 2002

Sex Differences in Disease Presentation in the Emergency Department - 2002

Career Paths in Diagnostic Radiology: Scope and Effect of Part-Time Work - 2001

Mammography-related Anxiety: Effect of Preprocedural Patient Education - 2001

Medical Sociology at the Millennium - 2000

Social and Psychological Factors, Physiological Processes, and Physical Health - 2000

Sociological Explanations of Gender Differences in Mental and Physical Health - 2000

Gender Matters: An Integrated Model for Understanding Men's and Women's Health - 1999

Gender, Household Labor, and Psychological Distress: The Impact of the Amount and Division of Housework - 1999

Integrating Sociological and Biological Models: An Editorial - 1999

Gender, Time Use, and Health - 1991