Researchers awarded fellowship to explore resilience in Houston’s African-American communities

Quianta Moore, fellow in child health policy at Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, and Rachel Kimbro, professor of sociology at Rice and founding director of the Urban Health Program at the university’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, have been awarded a fellowship to work with the Houston Area Urban League to study resilience and health in the city’s African-American communities.

Rice’s Rachel Kimbro, left, and Quianta Moore were named fellows of the national Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program.

Their fellowship is part of the three-year Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program, led by the University of Minnesota with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The national program includes 30 teams, each with two researchers and one community leader.

“Together they will bridge the myriad factors that have an enormous influence on people’s health — education, neighborhoods, transportation, income, faith and so on,” said the program’s organizers. “Their work will address health disparities and build fundamentally healthier communities.”

Moore and Kimbro will work with Felicia Jackson, manager of family support services at the Houston Area Urban League.

Moore’s research focuses on developing empirically informed policies to advance the health of children. She specifically focuses on access to care in vulnerable populations through school-based clinics, telehealth and health education. Her most recent work involved identifying and making policy recommendations to address access to HIV prevention for high-risk adolescents.

Kimbro’s research focuses on racial and ethnic health disparities and family influences on health behaviors and outcomes. Current work examines family and neighborhood influences on child obesity, food insecurity and physical activity in low-income and immigrant families.

Moore and Kimbro are founding faculty members at Texas Children’s Hospital’s Center for Child Health Policy and Advocacy and adjunct faculty at Baylor College of Medicine. Kimbro is also a Baker Institute Rice Faculty Scholar.