Research Associate · Harvard University

Renae Wilkinson

I am a Research Associate with Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, with an affiliation at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Imitative on Health and Homelessness.

My scholarship is broadly engaged in the disciplines of epidemiology, public health, and sociology, where I employ quantitative methods alongside longitudinal and administrative data to study how social and structural conditions shape health across the life course.

My research program examines three interconnected areas: 1) housing insecurity and health, with an emphasis on evaluating policies and programs that promote health, well-being, and stability for individuals and families; 2) social determinants of health across the life course, with particular attention to social relationships as modifiable risk and protective factors; and 3) pathways to flourishing across nations, contributing to the Global Flourishing Study—a large-scale, multinational longitudinal cohort study—with a focus on housing insecurity and social relationships.

My research has been supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ National Center on Homelessness among Veterans, and my work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including Social Science & Medicine, SSM-Population Health, SSM-Mental Health, Journal of Urban Health, and the American Journal of Public Health.

I hold a Ph.D. in Sociology with a specialization in Health from Baylor University, master’s degrees from Baylor University (Sociology) and the University of Portland (Business Administration), and a B.A. in Sociology from Portland State University.