Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Ph.D., is the dean of social sciences at Rice University, where she is also the director of the Urban Health Program at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and a Rice scholar at the Baker Institute. Her research focuses on racial and ethnic health disparities and family influences on health behaviors and outcomes. Current work examines neighborhood characteristics and children’s health outcomes, particularly nutrition, obesity and physical activity. Recently awarded a Young Scholars Fellowship from the Foundation for Child Development, Kimbro’s next project will investigate young immigrant children’s physical activity within a variety of neighborhood contexts. Kimbro’s research has been funded by grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Active Living Research program, Mississippi State University’s Southern Rural Development Center, the University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research, Rice’s Baker Institute for Public Policy Health Economics Program and the Faculty Initiatives Fund at Rice. Kimbro earned her B.A. in sociology and policy studies at Rice and her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology at Princeton University. Following her doctoral work at Princeton, she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she received interdisciplinary training in population health.

Contact her at rtkimbro@rice.edu or (713) 348-4265.