Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

International Open Access Week is observed annually in order to highlight the benefits of free and immediate access to scholarly research worldwide. Open access allows research scholarship to have wide-reaching effects, and grants colleagues the ability to freely share and use research. This year’s theme is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?” – an opportunity to consider […]

VCU Alumni’s 10 Under 10 awards recognizes the noteworthy and distinctive achievements made by alumni who earned their first VCU degree (undergraduate, graduate or professional) within the past 10 years.  Michelle Laws, PhD, who earned her PhD in Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2016, has been selected by VCU’s Office of Alumni Relations as one […]

The Society of Behavioral Medicine held its 46th Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions on March 26th-29th in San Francisco, CA. Faculty, staff, and alumni from the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences represented our school at this year’s SBM meeting. Read on for some descriptions of their work and see more photos below! Sunny Jung […]

In keeping with the theme of this year’s Women’s History Month, this series highlights the importance and impact of mentoring partnerships between department faculty and their mentees. Maghboeba Mosavel, Ph.D. is a health disparities researcher whose work focuses on the social drivers of inequities and their negative impacts on chronic disease. Her funded projects have […]

For her Ph.D. from VCU’s School of Population Health, she explored bias, fear and other factors in her birth city of Baltimore. By Amelia Heymann Trauma is a big reason why many people aren’t getting proper dental care, and Briona Phillips brings a lifelong perspective to the issue. The Baltimore native earned her Ph.D. in social and […]

Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences alumna and affiliate faculty member, Jeanine Guidry, says improving our understanding of why people may or may not vaccinate remains ‘of great importance.’ By VCU News staff Jeanine Guidry, Ph.D., an affiliate faculty member at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Population Health and at the Richard T. […]

This Women’s History Month we’re featuring outstanding SBS alumnae, women in leadership roles, and students and faculty conducting research focused on improving women’s health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Brown graduated from the Social and Behavioral Sciences Ph.D. program in 2020. She is currently Assistant Professor at Drexel University’s College of […]

VCU Alumni’s 10 Under 10 awards program recognizes the noteworthy and distinctive achievements made by alumni who earned their first VCU degree (undergraduate, graduate or professional) within the past 10 years.  Assistant professor, Drexel University College of Nursing and Health Professions Kristal Lyn Brown, Ph.D. (Ph.D.’20), discovered her path studying health disparities in obesity treatment when […]

Dr. Kristal Brown, fellow in the Division of General Internal Medicine, was selected to be a 2021 Health Disparities Research Institute Scholar by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. The goal of the Health Disparities Research Institute is to provide participants with a broad overview of the leading issues facing minority health and health disparities research […]