From Prevalence to Pattern: A Gender-Specific Examination of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Systemic Inequity Among Black Americans
Dr. Natasha K. Oyedele is a postdoctoral researcher and epidemiologist whose work sits at the intersection of childhood adversity, substance use, and injury prevention. She earned her BA from Wellesley College and her MPH in Epidemiology from the Boston University School of Public Health. She earned a PhD in Drug Dependence Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Department of Mental Health.
Dr. Oyedele’s doctoral research examined the mechanisms and pathways linking adverse childhood adversity (ACE) and maltreatment to tobacco cigarette use among Black adults, with a focus on the utility of trauma-informed tobacco control interventions. Her dissertation used quantitative methods to identify latent classes of childhood adversity in association with cigarette smoking among Black women and men.
Her postdoctoral research builds on this foundation by addressing a critical gap in how ACEs are conceptualized and measured in epidemiologic research and public health surveillance. While conventional ACE frameworks encompass family violence, abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, unintentional injuries – including motor vehicle crashes, home fires, drowning, burns, and parental death remain largely absent from standard ACE measures. This omission is particularly striking given that unintentional injury is the leading cause of death among individuals younger than 45 and carries profound and lasting consequences for mental and behavioral health across the life course. Dr. Oyedele’s postdoctoral work aims to establish the evidence base for integrating unintentional injury into ACE measurement frameworks, with the goal of advancing more comprehensive and equitable approaches to injury prevention and public health surveillance.
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