About

Mahasin S. Mujahid is a professor of Epidemiology at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, holding the Lillian E. I. and Dudley J. Aldous Chair. Her research is devoted to examining neighborhood health effects, cardiovascular health disparities, and racial/ethnic health inequities over the life course, utilizing data from various U.S. cardiovascular cohorts. She aims to improve the measurement of structural and contextual neighborhood features and employs novel statistical methods to estimate the contribution of these factors to health disparities. Her work is funded by prominent institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and has been published in leading public health and medical journals. Dr. Mujahid holds leadership roles at UC Berkeley, including as the Director of the MPH Program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. She is an active member of the American Heart Association, where she is a fellow, a member of the Advocacy Committee, and the immediate past chair of the Social Determinants Scientific Subcommittee. She is recognized for her teaching and mentorship, receiving several honors from UC Berkeley, including the Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award, the Committee on Teaching Excellence Award, and the Leon Henkin Citation for Distinguished Service. Her academic background includes a BS in Mathematics from Xavier University, an MS in Biostatistics, and a PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Michigan, as well as being a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Harvard University.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Sociology
• Demography
• Political Science
• Social psychology
• Psychiatry
• Environmental health
• Psychology
• Family medicine
• Gerontology

Selected publications

• Disparities in the provision of perinatal care based on patient race in the United States

  Birth · 2023 · 14 citations

  • Medicine
  • Family medicine
  • Demography

  BACKGROUND: In the United States, there are significant health inequities in perinatal care. This study examined differences in perinatal care provided to women based on the birthing person's designated race, within a large and diverse cohort of women. METHODS: This retrospective electronic medical record review identified patients receiving perinatal care within a large hospital system between January 2012 and September 2018 and examined associations between maternal designated race/ethnicity (Hispanic or non-Hispanic [NH] Black, Asian or White) and various provider treatment decisions. RESULTS: The study sample (N = 7056) was comprised of 36% Hispanic, 34% NH White, 21% NH Black, and 4% NH Asian women, aged 29.7 ± 6.3 years; 53% of the sample had private insurance, and 45% had Medicaid. Few differences by race were seen in perinatal care based on guidelines or expert recommendations (nondiscretionary care). Discretionary care, however, varied by race: Compared with NH White women, NH Black women were less likely to receive a prenatal depression screen (OR 0.8 [95% CI: 0.7, 0.9]) and more likely to have a urine drug test when denying drug use (OR 1.6 [95% CI 1.3, 2.0]), whereas Hispanic (OR 0.6 [95% CI: 0.5, 0.8]) and NH Asian (0.4 [95% CI 0.2, 0.9]) women were less likely to have a urine drug test completed when denying drug use. DISCUSSION: Perinatal care differs by maternal race/ethnicity, particularly when guidelines or expert recommendations are absent. Greater efforts need to be made to identify and mitigate providers' implicit and explicit biases; expanded professional guidelines may offer some protections against inequitable, discretionary care.

  DOI

• Punitive school discipline as a mechanism of structural marginalization with implications for health inequity: A systematic review of quantitative studies in the health and social sciences literature

  Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 45 citations

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Criminology

  Punitive school discipline deploys surveillance, exclusion, and corporal punishment to deter or account for perceived student misbehavior. Yet, education and legal scholarship suggests it fails to achieve stated goals and exacerbates harm. Furthermore, it is disproportionately imposed upon Black, Latinx, Native/Indigenous, LGBTQIA, and disabled students, concentrating its harms among marginalized young people. Its implications for health, however, are less clear. Using public health theories of sociostructural embodiment, we propose a framework characterizing pathways linking societal ideologies (e.g., racism) to punitive discipline with implications for health and health inequity and then present our systematic review of the punitive school discipline-health literature (N = 19 studies) conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Data were extracted on guiding theories, study characteristics, measurement, methods, and findings. This literature links punitive school discipline to greater risk for numerous health outcomes, including persistent depressive symptoms, depression, drug use disorder in adulthood, borderline personality disorder, antisocial behavior, death by suicide, injuries, trichomoniasis, pregnancy in adolescence, tobacco use, and smoking, with documented implications for racial health inequity. Using our adapted framework, we contextualize results and recommend avenues for future research. Our findings support demands to move away from punitive school discipline toward health-affirming interventions to promote school connectedness, safety, and wellbeing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Earlier treatment in adults with high lifetime risk of cardiovascular diseases: What prevention trials are feasible and could change clinical practice? Report of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Workshop

  American Journal of Preventive Cardiology · 2022 · 39 citations

  • Medicine
  • Intensive care medicine
  • Gerontology

  More than half of U.S. young adults have low ten-year but high lifetime risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Improving primary prevention in young adulthood may help reduce persistent CVD disparities and overall CVD morbidity and mortality. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) convened a workshop in 2021 to identify potential trial opportunities in CVD prevention in young adults. The workshop identified promising interventions that could be tested, including interventions that focus on a single cardiovascular risk factor (e.g., lipids or inflammation) to multiple risk factor interventions (e.g., multicomponent lifestyle interventions or fixed-low dose combination of medications). Given the sample size and duration for a trial with hard endpoints, more research is needed on the utility of intermediate endpoints identified noninvasively such as subclinical coronary atherosclerosis as a surrogate endpoint. For now, clinical outcomes trials with hard endpoints will more likely change clinical practice. Trial efficiency depends on accurate identification of high-risk young adults, which can potentially be done using traditional risk equations, coronary artery calcium screening, computerized tomography coronary angiography, and polygenic risk scores. Trials in young adults should include enhanced recruitment strategies with intense community engagement to enroll a trial population that is racially, ethnically, geographically, and socially diverse. Despite the challenges in conducting large prevention trials in young adults, recent advances including innovation in clinical trial conduct, new therapies and successful interventions in older populations, and an increasing recognition of a lifespan approach to risk assessment have made such trials more feasible than ever. Disclosures: The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the National Institutes of Health; or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

  DOI

• Area-level racial prejudice and health: A systematic review.

  Health Psychology · 2022 · 41 citations

  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology

  BACKGROUND: In recent years, there has been growing interest in "moving beyond the individual" to measure area-level racism as a social determinant of health. Much of this work has aggregated racial prejudice data collected at the individual-level to the area-level. OBJECTIVE: As this is a rapidly emerging area of research, we conducted a systematic literature review to describe evidence of the relationship between area-level racial prejudice and health, whether results differed by race/ethnicity, and to characterize key conceptual and methodological considerations to guide future research. METHOD: We searched four interdisciplinary databases for US-based, peer-reviewed articles measuring area level racial prejudice by aggregating individual-level indicators of racial prejudice and examining associations with mental or physical health outcome(s). Data extraction followed PRISMA guidelines and also included theory and conceptualization, pathways to health, and strengths and limitations. RESULTS: = 1). All studies found a positive association between area-level racial prejudice and adverse health outcomes among racial/ethnic minoritized groups, with four studies also showing a similar association among Whites. Engagement with formal theory was limited and exposure conceptualization was mixed. Methodological considerations included unmeasured confounding and trade-offs between generalizability, self-censorship, and specificity of measurement. CONCLUSIONS: Future research should continue to develop the conceptual and methodological rigor of this work and test hypotheses to inform evidence-based interventions to advance population health and reduce racial health inequities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Structural racism and its pathways to asthma and atopic dermatitis

  Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology · 2021 · 95 citations

  • Sociology
  • Dermatology
  • Medicine
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Associations between historical residential redlining and current age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits due to asthma across eight cities in California: an ecological study

  The Lancet Planetary Health · 2020 · 330 citations

  • Sociology
  • Geography
  • Environmental health

  BACKGROUND: Asthma disproportionately affects communities of colour in the USA, but the underlying factors for this remain poorly understood. In this study, we assess the role of historical redlining as outlined in security maps created by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), the discriminatory practice of categorising neighbourhoods on the basis of perceived mortgage investment risk, on the burden of asthma in these neighbourhoods. METHODS: , and percent of the population living below 2 times the federal poverty level. We also built random intercept and slope models to assess city-level variation in the relationship between redlining and asthma. FINDINGS: In the 1431 census tracts assessed (64 [4·5%] grade A, 241 [16·8%] grade B, 719 [50·2%] grade C, and 407 [28·4%] grade D), the proportion of the population that was non-Hispanic black and Hispanic, the percentage of the population living in poverty, and diesel exhaust particle emissions all significantly increased as security map risk grade worsened (p<0·0001). The median age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits due to asthma were 2·4 times higher in census tracts that were previously redlined (median 63·5 [IQR 34·3] visits per 10 000 residents per year [2011-13]) than in tracts at the lowest risk level (26·5 [18·4]). In adjusted models, redlined census tracts were associated with a relative risk of 1·39 (95% CI 1·21-1·57) in rates of emergency department visits due to asthma compared with that of lowest-risk census tracts. INTERPRETATION: Historically redlined census tracts have significantly higher rates of emergency department visits due to asthma, suggesting that this discriminatory practice might be contributing to racial and ethnic asthma health disparities. FUNDING: National Heart Lung Blood Institute.

  DOI

• After “The China Virus” Went Viral: Racially Charged Coronavirus Coverage and Trends in Bias Against Asian Americans

  Health Education & Behavior · 2020 · 171 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Psychology

  = 339,063), we sought to ascertain if this change in media tone increased bias against Asian Americans. Local polynomial regression and interrupted time-series analyses revealed that Implicit Americanness Bias-or the subconscious belief that European American individuals are more "American" than Asian American individuals-declined steadily from 2007 through early 2020 but reversed trend and began to increase on March 8, following the increase in stigmatizing language in conservative media outlets. The trend reversal in bias was more pronounced among conservative individuals. This research provides evidence that the use of stigmatizing language increased subconscious beliefs that Asian Americans are "perpetual foreigners." Given research that perpetual foreigner bias can beget discriminatory behavior and that experiencing discrimination is associated with adverse mental and physical health outcomes, this research sounds an alarm about the effects of stigmatizing media on the health and welfare of Asian Americans.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kristine A. Madsen

  University of California, Berkeley

  4 shared

• Elizabeth Buys

  Mountain Area Health Education Center

  2 shared

• Jaime Alberto López

  University of Southern California

  2 shared

• Raine Robichaud

  2 shared

• Amanda Fukutome

  University of California, Berkeley

  2 shared

• Mary Byrn

  Loyola University Chicago

  2 shared

• Moira O’Neill

  University of California, Berkeley

  2 shared

• Malo Hutson

  2 shared

Labs

• Mujahid Research GroupPI

Awards & honors

• Distinguished Faculty Mentor Award
• Committee on Teaching Excellence Award
• Leon Henkin Citation for Distinguished Service

Similar researchers at University of California, Berkeley

• Peidong Yangh-262
• Jennifer A. Doudnah-230
• Jeffrey R. Longh-189
• John F. Hartwigh-180
• Rasmus Nielsenh-180