Briana Williams, PhD, MPH, a Houston native with a background in global health, joins Resound Research as an Assistant Research Scientist. Briana’s work incorporates both quantitative and qualitative approaches. She is a recent graduate from the International Health and Sustainable Development program at Tulane University’s Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Her dissertation, a mixed methods study, interrogated the intersectional impacts of racism, classism, and sexism on sexual and reproductive health among Afro-Peruvians and Afro-Brazilians.
At Resound Research Briana has been working with the Frontera Projects analyzing data from projects in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley and contributing to other projects examining contraception and abortion access in Texas and beyond.
“It is exciting to be using my global health training to research sexual and reproductive health across various communities in the US. In particular, being able to focus on Texas, where I was born and raised, brings my education and my research practice full circle.”
A recent publication by Briana and her team from Tulane, “Place-Based Structural Disadvantage, Lethal Police Violence, and Adverse Birth Outcomes Among Black Birthing People,” was just published in the Journal of Urban Health. Using 2020 National Center for Health Statistics natality data and Mapping Police Violence data (2015–2019), this article examines the association of low birth weight and preterm birth and structural racism. Findings suggest that structural disadvantage and policing are contextual factors linked with birth outcomes among Black birthing people.
“The rate of maternal mortality and morbidity in Texas is a crisis, and more common in Black communities,” says Briana. “Of course, understanding individual cases can shed light on this topic, but our research shows that contextual analysis also matters for understanding Black reproductive well-being.”
The Resound Research team welcomes Briana—we’re looking forward to collaborating on research that supports sexual and reproductive health in Texas and across the country.