About

Kerry Green is a Chair and Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. She joined the faculty in August 2007 after completing a post-doctoral fellowship in Prevention Science at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2013 and to Full Professor in 2020. Her research concentrates on improving the health and well-being of disadvantaged populations, with a focus on identifying the causes of health disparities over the life course among urban Black Americans. Much of her work utilizes longitudinal cohorts, especially the Woodlawn Study, a community cohort study from Chicago that began in 1965 and includes data spanning over 55 years. Her recent work emphasizes promoting healthy aging among marginalized populations. Dr. Green has extensively published on her research, which is supported by continuous NIH funding from institutes such as NIDA, NIA, NIAAA, and NICHD. She has also contributed to the academic community by founding and directing the department’s undergraduate honors program and mentoring students and faculty at all levels.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Clinical psychology
• Gerontology
• Demography
• Political Science
• Developmental psychology
• Sociology
• Family medicine
• Environmental health
• Medical education
• Criminology
• Economic growth
• Pedagogy
• Nursing

Selected publications

• Does parental racial socialization protect Black youth from the impact of racism on problematic substance use over the long term?

  Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology · 2025-07-28

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  OBJECTIVES: Parental racial socialization refers to the messages children receive about race from their parents. Little is known about parental racial socialization's long-term impact on problematic substance use or whether it can protect against adversities commonly experienced by Black Americans. We examined whether parental racial socialization reduces the risk of problematic substance use and buffers the impact of neighborhood disadvantage and racial discrimination on problematic substance use, with attention to the types of messaging. METHOD: = 825) of the Woodlawn Study, a community cohort study that followed Black Americans from Chicago from first grade into midlife (55.3% female), with data collected at ages 6, 16, 32, and 42. Adjusted regression models were run with multiple imputation accounting for missing data. RESULTS: After controlling for covariates, we found parental racial socialization messages about racial barriers were associated with a lower likelihood of meeting criteria for problematic substance use in midlife (adjusted odds ratio = 0.45, 95% CI [0.22, 0.93]). While racial discrimination and neighborhood disadvantage were statistically significant predictors of problematic substance use in unadjusted models, neither was statistically significant in adjusted models. Neither the interaction term between parental racial socialization and personally mediated racism nor the interaction term between parental racial socialization and neighborhood disadvantage was statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests the promise of parental racial socialization messages about racial barriers to prevent and reduce the risk of problematic substance use. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Examining the Relationship Between Incarceration and Healthy Aging

  Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Our understanding of the collateral consequences of incarceration on health, biological aging, and mortality has increased exponentially in recent years. Drawing on newly collected data on aging at age 62 and retrospective reports of incarceration history among a community cohort of Black men and women who have been prospectively followed from first grade (in 1966) to later life (modal age 62), this study adds to this growing literature by examining whether incarceration is associated with healthy aging, a concept that captures the aging experience through traditional indicators, such as physical and mental health conditions, as well as through indicators of functional ability and well-being, such as cognitive functioning, sleep, and hearing loss. By focusing on a first-grade, single-race cohort from the same socially-disadvantaged neighborhood, this study holds constant race, age, and early life context by design. Although largely a cross-sectional study, we also include key early life control variables in multivariable models. Results show that incarceration history is associated with less healthy aging compared to never being arrested using a global index and across many of the individual indicators. One unexpected finding is that many of these detriments are equally felt among the incarcerated and those with earlier stages of system contact (i.e., those arrested but not incarcerated). Taken together, these findings represent a first step in building scholarship on the association between criminal legal system contact and healthy aging, broadly defined, from a life course perspective and provide direction for future research in this emerging area. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40865-025-00286-5.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Association between State-Level Structural Racism and Alcohol and Tobacco Use Behaviors among a National Probability Sample of Black Americans.

  UNC Libraries · 2025-03-25

  articleOpen access

  BACKGROUND: Structural racism is how society maintains and promotes racial hierarchy and discrimination through established and interconnected systems. Structural racism is theorized to promote alcohol and tobacco use, which are risk factors for adverse health and cancer-health outcomes. The current study assesses the association between measures of state-level structural racism and alcohol and tobacco use among a national sample of 1,946 Black Americans. METHODS: An existing composite index of state-level structural racism including five dimensions (subscales; i.e., residential segregation and employment, economic, incarceration, and educational inequities) was merged with individual-level data from a national sample dataset. Hierarchical linear and logistic regression models, accounting for participant clustering at the state level, assessed associations between structural racism and frequency of alcohol use, frequency of binge drinking, smoking status, and smoking frequency. Two models were estimated for each behavioral outcome, one using the composite structural racism index and one modeling dimensions of structural racism in lieu of the composite measure, each controlling for individual-level covariates. RESULTS: Results indicated positive associations between the incarceration dimension of the structural racism index and binge drinking frequency, smoking status, and smoking frequency. An inverse association was detected between the education dimension and smoking status. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that state-level structural racism expressed in incarceration disparities, is positively associated with alcohol and tobacco use among Black Americans. IMPACT: Addressing structural racism, particularly in incarceration practices, through multilevel policy and intervention may help to reduce population-wide alcohol and tobacco use behaviors and improve the health outcomes of Black populations.

  PublisherDOI

• Standing Up for Core Principles in Departments of Social and Behavioral Sciences in Public Health: Department Chairs Speak Out

  American Journal of Public Health · 2025-10-08 · 1 citations

  editorialOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supplemental Table 1 from The Association between State-Level Structural Racism and Alcohol and Tobacco Use Behaviors among a National Probability Sample of Black Americans

  2024-02-06

  preprintOpen access

  <p>Supplemental Table 1 describes the dimensions and measures used in the state racism index</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplemental Table 3 from The Association between State-Level Structural Racism and Alcohol and Tobacco Use Behaviors among a National Probability Sample of Black Americans

  2024-02-06

  preprintOpen access

  <p>Supplemental Table 3 reports the correlation matrix of structural racism measures, drinking and smoking behaviors, and demographic variables</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplemental Table 3 from The Association between State-Level Structural Racism and Alcohol and Tobacco Use Behaviors among a National Probability Sample of Black Americans

  2024-02-06

  preprintOpen access

  <p>Supplemental Table 3 reports the correlation matrix of structural racism measures, drinking and smoking behaviors, and demographic variables</p>

  PublisherDOI

• Supplemental Table 2 from The Association between State-Level Structural Racism and Alcohol and Tobacco Use Behaviors among a National Probability Sample of Black Americans

  2024-02-06

  preprintOpen access

  <p>Supplemental Table 2 reports the State Structural Racism Index and Dimension Scores by State</p>

  PublisherDOI

• From one death to another: The relationship between familial deaths and one’s own mortality risk among an urban Black American cohort

  Social Science & Medicine · 2024-11-08

  articleOpen access

  Black Americans continue to be 1.5 times more likely to experience premature death with life expectancy up to six years shorter than their white American counterparts. These racial disparities in mortality translate into Black Americans being much more likely to experience the deaths of family members at younger ages in the life course. This study examines the impact of experiencing familial death on the survivor’s mortality risk among a cohort of Black men and women. Data collected from a community cohort first assessed in 1966 (at age 6) and followed at three additional time points (ages 16, 32, and 42) are supplemented with mortality data, retrieved from the National Death Index, that include deaths through 2021 (modal age 61). Among the 941 participants who survived to age 32 and had information on familial deaths, 38.9% experienced the death of a parent, child, or sibling by age 32, and close to one-fifth (18.2%) died between ages 33 and 61. Cox regression models that adjust for early life covariates revealed a 48% higher mortality risk among those who experienced at least one familial death by age 32; separate models provide evidence that the accumulation of familial deaths is related to midlife mortality risk. Models of relationship type indicate that death of a mother or sibling is associated with a 74% and 77% increase in mortality risk, respectively. Results highlight the heavy burden of premature familial mortality on Black Americans and its adverse impact on one’s own life expectancy. • Exposure to familial death is prevalent among this cohort. • Exposure and accumulation of familial loss is related to midlife mortality risk. • Maternal or sibling loss is significantly associated with one’s own mortality risk. • Young adulthood may be a particularly sensitive period for the impact of loss.

  PublisherDOI

• Intersectionality and the Association Between State-Level Structural Racism, Binge Alcohol Consumption, and Smoking Status Among Black Americans

  Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities · 2024-09-20 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Understanding the Aging Process of Urban African Americans Across the Life Course: Identifying Early Risk and Protection for Cognition and Health in Midlife

  NIH · $3.4M · 2018–2025

• NIH Grant R03DA016425

  NIH · $54k · 2005

• NIH Grant R01DA026863

  NIH · $1.0M · 2013

• How drugs, crime and criminal justice involvement influence the lives and deaths of an urban African American cohort followed for 45 years

  NIH · $740k · 2017–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Rosa M. Crum

  Johns Hopkins Medicine

  47 shared

• Carla L. Storr

  University of Maryland, Baltimore

  45 shared

• Ramin Mojtabai

  Johns Hopkins University

  39 shared

• Anika Alvanzo

  Johns Hopkins Medicine

  37 shared

• Margaret E. Ensminger

  Johns Hopkins University

  35 shared

• Bernadette Cullen

  Johns Hopkins University

  32 shared

• Beth A. Reboussin

  Wake Forest University

  27 shared

• Elaine Eggleston Doherty

  University of Mary

  26 shared

Labs

• The Woodlawn StudyPI

Education

• PhD, Health, Behavior and Society

  Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

  2004

• MA, Human Development

  University of Maryland at College Park

  1998

Awards & honors

• Leda Amick Wilson Mentoring Award, University of Maryland Sc…
• UMD SPH Research and Development Award (2020)
• Honoree, Maryland Research Excellence Celebration, 2020
• Winston Family Honors Faculty Award, 2019
• BCH 3.5 Club for Teaching Excellence, 2017