Monica Baskin

Monica Baskin is an American psychologist who is a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research considers health disparities in the Deep South. She serves as Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Early life and education

Baskin grew up in Southwest Atlanta. Her mother and father were from rural Georgia and Alabama. Her father was diagnosed with eye neoplasm when she was a child, and ultimately lost his eye. Baskin has said that she remembers being told that she "would need to be 'twice as good' as her white peers in order to be as successful,". She studied psychology and sociology at Emory University. She moved to Georgia State University for her graduate studies, where she earned a master's degree in community counselling. She remained at Georgia State for her doctoral research, where she studied public health interventions for adolescents diagnosed with sickle cell disease. After losing her father to cancer whilst she was still at high school, Baskin became interested in why physical and psychological distress was still so taboo in communities of colour. Like many other African-Americans, her father was only diagnosed with cancer when he was at stage 4, which meant that death was inevitable. She has said that she was motivated to work on health disparities because she realised that there weren't many people who looked like her in the field. She was sponsored by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Loan Repayment Programme which allows scientists studying health disparities to start their independent research careers without student loan debt. After graduating, Baskin returned to Emory University, where she was awarded a paediatric psychology fellowship. In 1997 Baskin was made a Minority Fellow of the American Psychological Association.

Research and career

Baskin is a psychologist who investigates the physical and mental health of minorities. Her research considers how lifestyle impacts medical outcomes, and how behavioural interventions can help to mitigate health disparities.

In 2013 Baskin coordinated the report "PLACE MATTERS for Health in Jefferson County, Alabama: The Status of Health Equity on the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Alabama". The report was released fifty years after the protests in Birmingham marking when the Jim Crow laws were overruled. The report collected information of life expectancy, infant mortality and access to healthy food in various areas across the county, and studied how they depended on the demographics of the communities (including ethnicity and socioeconomic status). She identified that Black mothers in Jefferson County were 2.5 times more likely to die during child birth as white mothers, and that Black households in Jefferson County had annual incomes $22,000 below the federal poverty guideline. The report made a series of recommendations, including funding early childhood education programmes, implementing financial programmes to provide healthy food in poor neighbourhoods and expanding Medicaid.

In 2015 Baskin was awarded an National Cancer Institute grant to develop strategies to prevent obesity in African American women. Her research has shown the close relationships between cancer and obesity, and identified that African American women are most at risk.

Baskin is Chair of the Jefferson County Collaborative for Health Equity, an organisation which looks to eliminate health disparities through public policy. In 2020 she was elected President of the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

Selected publications

• Baskin, M. L.; Ard, J.; Franklin, F.; Allison, D. B. (2005). "Prevalence of obesity in the United States". Obesity Reviews. 6 (1): 5–7. doi:10.1111/j.1467-789X.2005.00165.x. ISSN 1467-7881. PMID 15655032. S2CID 41526232.
• Campbell, Marci Kramish; Hudson, Marlyn Allicock; Resnicow, Ken; Blakeney, Natasha; Paxton, Amy; Baskin, Monica (2007-03-16). "Church-Based Health Promotion Interventions: Evidence and Lessons Learned". Annual Review of Public Health. 28 (1): 213–234. doi:10.1146/annurev.publhealth.28.021406.144016. ISSN 0163-7525. PMID 17155879.
• Keith, S. W.; Redden, D. T.; Katzmarzyk, P. T.; Boggiano, M. M.; Hanlon, E. C.; Benca, R. M.; Ruden, D.; Pietrobelli, A.; Barger, J. L.; Fontaine, K. R.; Wang, C. (2006). "Putative contributors to the secular increase in obesity: exploring the roads less traveled". International Journal of Obesity. 30 (11): 1585–1594. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0803326. ISSN 1476-5497. PMID 16801930. S2CID 342831.

Awards and honours

• 1997 American Psychological Association Minority Fellow
• 2007 Jefferson County Public Health Hero Awards
• 2013 University of Alabama Institute for Rural Health Research Rural Health Heroes Award
• 2016 Max Cooper Award for Excellence in Research
• 2016 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Culture of Health Leader
• 2017 Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine

Personal life

Baskin has two daughters. One of her daughters, Kennedy, studied neuroscience at Emory University.