Brian Finch

About

Brian Finch is a Professor of Sociology at USC Dornsife, with a research focus that bridges social demography, social epidemiology, and medical sociology. His work explores health disparities, social genomics, criminology, and well-being. Finch's academic background includes a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, obtained in June 2000, a Master's degree in Sociology from San Diego State University earned in June 1997, and a Bachelor's degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California at Berkeley completed in June 1993. He also completed postdoctoral training as a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at UC Berkeley from September 2000 to July 2002. Finch is affiliated with the Center for Economic and Social Research and specializes in social demography, population health, and health disparities, employing quantitative methods in his research.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Demography
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Criminology
• Internal medicine
• Social psychology
• Geography
• Economics
• Operations management

Selected publications

• Perceived Discrimination and Mental Distress Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From the Understanding America Study

  American Journal of Preventive Medicine · 2020 · 144 citations

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Assessing Data Completeness, Quality, and Representativeness of Justifiable Homicides in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports: A Research Note

  Journal of Quantitative Criminology · 2021 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Educational Influences on Late-Life Health: Genetic Propensity and Attained Education

  The Journals of Gerontology Series B · 2023-10-20 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  OBJECTIVES: The educational gradient in late-life health is well established. Despite this, there are still ambiguities concerning the role of underlying confounding by genetic influences and gene-environment (GE) interplay. Here, we investigate the role of educational factors (attained and genetic propensities) on health and mortality in late life using genetic propensity for educational attainment (as measured by a genome-wide polygenic score, PGSEdu) and attained education. METHODS: By utiliz…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Determining Gentrification’s Relationship to Birth Outcomes in Metropolitan California

  Housing Policy Debate · 2022 · 10 citations

  There is inconsistent evidence as to whether gentrification, the increase of affluent residents into low-income neighborhoods, is detrimental to health. To date, there is no systematic evidence on how gentrification may matter for a range of birth outcomes across cities with varying characteristics. We utilize California's Birth Cohort File (2009-2012), Decennial Census data, and the American Community Survey (2008-2012) to investigate the relationship of gentrification to: preterm birth, low bi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do Sheriff-Coroners Underreport Officer-Involved Homicides?

  Academic Forensic Pathology · 2022-12-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction: In the United States, each state sets its own standards for its death investigation system. These may require independent medical examiners and coroners or allow for the sheriff to assume the role of coroner. Motivated by the well-established fact that counts of officer-involved homicides in official data sets grossly undercount the number of these incidents, we examine the possibility that different death investigation systems may lead to different death classification outcomes. M…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• A Social Demography of Racial Health Disparities

  NIH · $1.8M · 2009–2014

• SES health gradients in late life: testing models of gene-environment interplay in an international twin consortium

  NIH · $643k · 2018–2023

• SES health gradients in late life: testing models of gene-environment interplay in an international twin consortium

  NIH · $2.2M · 2018–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Audrey N. Beck

  San Diego State University

  27 shared

• Nicole Lurie

  Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations

  21 shared

• D. Phuong

  21 shared

• Chloe E. Bird

  Tufts Medical Center

  17 shared

• Robert A. Hummer

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  15 shared

• Deborah A. Cohen

  Kaiser Permanente

  15 shared

• José J. Escarce

  University of California, Los Angeles

  14 shared

• Tamara Dubowitz

  University of Pittsburgh

  11 shared

Similar researchers at University of Southern California

• Jennifer Hookh-30
• Lynne Casperh-28
• Paul Lichtermanh-27