Kristin Z. Black, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Maternal and Child Health and Department of Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) in the Gillings School of Global Public Health. She received her MPH and PhD in Maternal and Child Health from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Dr. Black is committed to utilizing community-based participatory research, mixed methods, and racial equity approaches to understand and address inequities in reproductive health and chronic disease outcomes. Her research merges 3 key components. First, Dr. Black explores the connections between reproductive health, maternal health, and chronic diseases, and if these outcomes differ by race/ethnicity or other social identities. Second, she focuses on understanding what individual- and systems-level factors may hinder or facilitate birthing people’s journey through maternal healthcare services. Third, she is committed to transforming research into action by engaging community stakeholders in implementing and sustaining interventions that tackle health inequities and structural racism.

Dr. Black is a part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s first cohort of Health Equity Scholars for Action, a career development award that funded her project, Mapping and Analyzing Pressure Points and Structural inequities in Maternal Healthcare (MAPPS-MH) Project. She partners with investigators around the country and is a co-investigator on funded grants at the Ohio State University, Washington University in St. Louis, and East Carolina University. Additionally, she is a Qualitative Research Consultant for ResearchTalk and Deputy Director of the UNC Center of Excellence in Maternal & Child Health Education, Science, and Practice. Through her research and teaching, Dr. Black mentors students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She teaches courses on qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Dr. Black’s work has been published in Qualitative Health Research, Social Science & Medicine, Frontiers in Public Health, Ethnicity & Health, JAMA Oncology, Breast Cancer Research, and Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action. Her array of published work includes leading a chapter about using anti-racism organizing in cancer care in the pivotal and timely book, Racism: Science & Tools for the Public Health Professional, published in 2019.

Dr. Black is dedicated to serving the public health profession and community organizations in the pursuit of health equity. She is a member of the Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative (a community-medical-academic partnership) and president of the Society for the Analysis of African American Public Health Issues.

She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her 6-year-old daughter.