Chloe E. Bird (she/her), an adjunct senior sociologist at RAND, professor of policy analysis at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, director of the Center for Health Equity Research at Tufts Medical Center, and Sara Murray Jordan Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical School, studies women's health and determinants of sex/gender differences in health and health care. Bird has served as senior advisor in the National Institutes of Health’s Office for Research on Women's Health and editor-in-chief of Women's Health Issues, where she is now associate editor.
Her current work includes an NSF-funded study examining sociologists’ identity development as STEM researchers and NIH-funded work assessing the impact of policy efforts to improve maternal health care and reduce disparities. She is working to build a donor-funded Women's Health Research and Policy Center.
Recent research includes a WHAM-commissioned study assessing societal and economic impacts of increasing funding for research on women's health. In Gender and Health: The Effects of Constrained Choice and Social Policies (Cambridge University Press, 2008), Bird and her coauthor explore how policymakers and other stakeholders shape individuals' opportunities to pursue a healthy life. They emphasize the need for research that informs stakeholders' decisions.
Bird received the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology for her work on women's health. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Health Behavior. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Selected Publications
Priya Batra, Gabriela Alvarado, Chloe E Bird, "The “Birth-Centered Outcomes Research Engagement (B-CORE) in Medi-Cal” Project: Community-Generated Recommendations to Decrease Maternal Mortality and Severe Maternal Morbidity," Women's Health Issues, 33(5), 2023
Alyson M Cavanaugh, Mitchell J Rauh, Caroline A Thompson, John Alcaraz, William M Mihalko, Chloe E Bird, Charles B Eaton, Milagros C Rosal, Wenjun Li, Aladdin H. Shadyab, Todd Gilmer, and Andrea Z. LaCroix., "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Utilization of Total Knee Arthroplasty among Older Women," Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, 27(12), 2019
Kathryn Godburn Schubert, Chloe E Bird, Katy Kozhimmanil, Susan F Wood, "To Address Women's Health Inequity, It Must First Be Measured," Health Equity, 6(1), 2022
Crystal W Cené, Xiaoyan Iris Leng, Khushnood Faraz, Matthew Allison, Khadijah Breathett, Chloe Bird, Mace Coday, Giselle Corbie‐Smith, Randi Foraker, Nkechinyere N Ijioma, Milagros C Rosal, Shawnita Sealy‐Jefferson, Tetyana P Shippee, Candyce H Kroenke, J, "Social Isolation and Incident Heart Failure Hospitalization in Older Women: Women’s Health Initiative Study Findings," Journal of the American Heart Association, 11(5), 2022
Chloe E Bird, "Doubling NIH Funding For Women’s Health Would Yield Substantial Return on Investment," Health Affairs Forefront, 2022
Matthew D. Baird, Annie Chen, Andrew W. Dick, Chloe E. Bird, Melanie A. Zaber, Molly Waymouth, Grace Gahlon, Denise D. Quigley, Hamad Al-Ibrahim, Lori Frank, Societal Impact of Research Funding for Women’s Health in Lung Cancer: Technical Appendixes, RAND (RR-A708-9), 2021
Lois McCloskey, Judith Bernstein, Ndidimaka Amutah-Onukagha, Jodi Anthony, Mary Barger, Candice Belanoff, Trude Bennett, Chloe E Bird, Denise Bolds, Burke-Weber Brenna, Rebecca Carter, Ann Celi, Breanna Chachere, Joia Crear-Perry, Chase Crossno, Alba Cruz, "Bridging the Chasm between Pregancy and Health over the Life Course: A National Agenda for Research and Action," Women's Health Issues, 31(3), 2021