Kristen Brown is a senior research associate in the Health Policy Division at the Urban Institute. Her research leverages expertise in epidemiologic methods, statistics, social determinants of health, and biomedical sciences to take a multilevel, transdisciplinary approach to addressing long-standing racial and socioeconomic health inequities. Much of her recent work has focused on the health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, including examining differential access to health care resources, insurance coverage stability in children, and strategies for mitigating the pandemic’s long-term effects in communities of color. In other recent work, she led a study of community-led health initiatives that have had tangible public health impacts as part of a series that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Medicine report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.

Before joining Urban, Brown worked at the National Institutes of Health and Emory University, where she investigated the biological embodiment of social determinants of health. Her work has been published in several peer reviewed journals, including Psychoneuroendocrinology, the Annals of Epidemiology, and the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. She has received numerous awards, including the Harburg Award for Excellence in Social Epidemiology, the Psychoneuroendocrinology Editors’ Choice Award, the American Psychosomatic Society’s Young Investigator’s Colloquium Scholar Award, and a National Academies of Science Kavli Fellowship.

Brown holds a bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University in biological sciences and psychology, a master’s degree from the University of Michigan in human genetics, and a doctoral degree from the University of Michigan in epidemiologic science.