Naa Oyo A. Kwate, Ph.D. is Associate Professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, jointly appointed in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Human Ecology. A psychologist by training, she is an interdisciplinary social scientist with wide-ranging interests in racial inequality and African American health. Her research has centered primarily on the ways in which urban built environments reflect and create racial inequalities in the United States, and how racism directly and indirectly affects African American health. Much of her work has been in New York City, where she has studied topics including the disproportionate density of fast food in Black neighborhoods, the prevalence and effects of outdoor alcohol advertising, and experiences with racism and mental and physical health. Kwate's research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and by fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and others. She is the author of the short work, Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now, published by the University of Minnesota Press, and editor of The Street: A Photographic Field Guide to American Inequality, published by Rutgers University Press.
