David Williams: finding solutions for racial inequities in health

Abstract

David Williams was born “in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba”, and “raised in, at the time, the British colony of St Lucia”. His parents had not attended high school but they were, he recalls, “avid readers who had a lot of books at home” and his mother, who became a nurse aged 62 years, was a powerful source of inspiration for him. Over his influential career, Williams, who is the Norman Professor of Public Health and Chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies and of Sociology at Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA, has elucidated the ways in which racism, socioeconomic status, stress, and health behaviours impact physical and mental health.