Raja Staggers-Hakim

Assistant Professor of Sociology

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EDUCATION

PhD, Sociology, Howard University
MPH, Community Health, New York University
MSW, Clinical Social Work, Columbia University 

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

Dr. Raja Staggers-Hakim is a public health sociologist and racism scholar who serves as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her interdisciplinary research examines how structural and interpersonal racism shape sociological, psychological, and biological health outcomes across the life course. Integrating social theory of stratification with public health frameworks, her work investigates social determinants of health, environmental injustice, state violence, and the cumulative effects of racial trauma.

She is the developer of Racism Trauma Health Theory (RTHT), an interdisciplinary framework positioning racism as a traumatic and fundamental cause of health inequities. RTHT advances a conceptual and empirical model that distinguishes racism-related stress and trauma from general stress processes and identifies the multiplicative effects of racism across individual, structural, and historical domains.

Dr. Staggers-Hakim is Director of the Racial Trauma Health Lab, where she leads trauma-focused and equity-driven research examining the mechanisms through which racism operates as a social and biological determinant of health. The lab conducts secondary analysis of national datasets, original survey research, and qualitative inquiry to identify coping processes, mediators, and long-term health consequences associated with racialized exposure. The lab also mentors graduate and undergraduate students committed to advancing rigorous, theory-driven scholarship on race and health.

Dr. Staggers-Hakim is an affiliate faculty member with UConn’s Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP) and the Africana Studies Institute, reflecting her commitment to interdisciplinary and community-engaged scholarship.

Her scholarship has been published in leading peer-reviewed outlets, including the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, Journal of Black Studies, Ethnicity & Health, and Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, as well as in edited volumes and interdisciplinary forums addressing race, law, and environmental health. Across this body of work, she advances trauma-focused and equity-driven research, theory, and intervention.

Dr. Staggers-Hakim currently serves as Co-Chair of the Health, Health Policy, and Health Services Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) and Co-Chair of the World Congress on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, contributing to national and international dialogue on health inequities and structural reform.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Staggers-Hakim, R., & Zhao, P. (in press). Mapping social and emotional pathways from racism to adverse health: Applying Racism Trauma Health Theory to the CARDIA Study. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.

Staggers-Hakim, R. (2025). Racism Trauma Health Theory: Moving beyond a single factor to explain how racism harms health. Journal of Black Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/00219347251397421

Talbert, R. D., Staggers-Hakim, R., & Kalinowski, J. (2025). Heterogeneity in adverse childhood experiences and heart disease among U.S. Black women and men. Ethnicity & Health, 30(8), 983–999. https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2025.2575341

Staggers-Hakim, R. (2022). Profiled life: A systems approach to understanding the foundations and persistence of racism in America. Kendall Hunt Publishing.

Staggers-Hakim, R. (2016). The nation’s unprotected children and the ghost of Mike Brown, or the impact of national police killings on the health and social development of African American boys. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 26(3–4), 390–399. https://doi.org/10.1080/10911359.2015.1132864