INRICH Member Profile Card
Elizabeth Goodman
ccMass General Hospital for Children
I am a pediatrician, adolescent medicine sub-specialist, and social epidemiologist. I received my MD at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and my general pediatric and Adolescent Medicine specialty training at Children’s Hospital, Boston; I was also a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at UCSF, fellow at the Joint Program in Society and Health at New England Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health, and a William T Grant Scholar. I belong to many professional organizations, am an elected member of both the Society for Pediatric Research and American Pediatric Society, and am a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Society for Adolescent Medicine and Health.Prior to my tenure at MGH, I served on the faculties at Boston Children’s Hospital, Tufts Medical Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and Brandeis University.
Type of member: Regular
Telephone: 1-617-643-6631
Email Address: liz.goodman@sloan.mit.edu
Mailing Address: Division of General Academic Pediatrics, MassGeneral Hospital for Children, 55 Fruit St., Boston, MA 02114
Current research interests
For the past two decades, I have been attempting to understand how the structure of our society, created through social and economic policies and practices, influences health and well being. I have termed this area of research “the biology of social justice.” My research links social policy to psychological and physiological functioning by suggesting that the social structure created by our policies exerts direct physiological and psychological effects on health and wellbeing. Much of this research has centered on the process through which differences in social status influence children’s health and the trajectory toward adult cardiometabolic health. An important part of my research agenda is assessing the impact of perceptions of social position on health. A second line of inquiry is related to obesity, insulin resistance, and cardiometabolic risk. A third line of research is developing and evaluating programs which build strengths, encourage civic engagement, and offer opportunities for teens to positively impact both themselves and their environments.
Research priorities
Pathways and mechanisms: Stress and allostatic load. Social into the biological and epigenetic. | Methodological issues: Need to study social gradients as well as poverty. Multi-level studies - Society, Family & Individual. Which indicators? for example, perception of health vs. objective measures of health (these may be more reliable in studying mechanisms).
Selected publications
Goodman, E., Huang, B., Schafer-Kalkhoff, T., & Adler, N. E. (2007). Perceived Socioeconomic Status: A New Type of Identity That Influences Adolescents’ Self-Rated Health. Journal of Adolescent Health, 41(5), 479-487. doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.05.020
Goodman, E., Adler, N. E., Kawachi, I., Frazier, A. L., Huang, B., & Colditz, G. A. (2001). Adolescents Perceptions of Social Status: Development and Evaluation of a New Indicator. Pediatrics, 108(2). doi:10.1542/peds.108.2.e31 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/108/2/e31.full