Adjunct Sociologist; Professor of Policy Analysis, RAND School of Public Policy
Chloe E. Bird is an adjunct sociologist at RAND, professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy, director of the Center for Health Equity Research at Tufts Medical Center, and Sara Murray Jordan Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical School. She 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.
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 joint donor-funded Women's Health Research and Policy Institute between RAND and Tufts.
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.
Ph.D. and M.A. in sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; B.A. in sociology, Oberlin College
Director, Center for Health Equity Research, Tufts Medical Center; Sara Murray Jordan Professor of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine; Associate Editor, Women’s Health Issues
