Derek M Griffith
Biographic Data
| ID | 90982 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Derek M Griffith |
| GIVEN NAMES | Derek M |
| FAMILY NAME | Griffith |
| SIGNATURE | GRIFFITH D M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0018-9176 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 77 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 385 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 75 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Out of focus
Addressing men's own specific health concerns in the context of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) remains a largely neglected topic, despite growing levels of unmet SRH needs among men and the broader benefits of engaging men in the SRH of women and others. A comprehensive policy analysis explored how men are currently addressed and characterized within 37 key global and regional SRH-focused policies. Men's own SRH was found to be a significan…
Funding and Defunding of NIH Research Should Be Based on Real Science and Not Politics or Amorphous Constructs
Middle-aged Central American men’s perceptions of a healthy body weight, excess body weight and its relationship to chronic disease
Objective: To explore Central American men’s perceptions of healthy body weight, factors that influence weight gain and increase awareness of being overweight/obese, consequences of excess weight gain and gender similarities and differences in body weight. Design: In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with low-income, overweight or obese Central American men residing in the USA ( n = 25). Setting: Semi-structured, individual interviews …
“You’ve got the door cracked enough that maybe they can’t quite get it closed again”
Objective Diversity training is commonly used by organizations, but evidence of positive impacts is mixed. Antiracism training, which focuses on structural racism, is largely unexamined in the diversity training literature. The Racial Equity Institute (REI) offers a widely implemented antiracism training called Phase 1 which has never been formally evaluated. As a part of larger community-based participatory research partnership, the research tea…
Whiteness
Because residents of rural areas in the United States experience a persistent disadvantage in life expectancy relative to their urban counterparts, it is critical to consider the structural and social determinants that affect the health of rural populations. White Americans constitute 3 out of every 4 (76%) rural residents, and there is growing evidence that rurality is a predictor of poor health status for White Americans in ways that are not pr…
Qualitative Study on Internet Use and Care Impact for Black Men With Prostate Cancer
Black men have a greater risk of prostate cancer as well as worse quality of life and more decisional regret after prostate cancer treatment compared to non-Hispanic White men. Furthermore, patients with prostate cancer who primarily obtain information on the internet have significantly more decisional regret compared to other information sources. Our objective was to explore the perspectives of Black patients on the use and impact of the interne…
Community Health Worker Interventions for Men
INTRODUCTION: Community health workers (CHWs) are health promotion specialists who are trusted members of the community served and have a close understanding of the community's needs and values. CHWs are a cost-effective and scalable workforce to promote health among men through tailored approaches. The purpose of the present review was to use the RE-AIM Framework to assess design, implementation, and outcomes of CHW-implemented health promotion …
Decolonization and antiracism
In this paper, as Black scholars, we address ways that interventions designed to promote equity in health can create pathways for coupling decolonization with antiracism by drawing on the intersection of the health of Africans and African Americans. To frame this intersection, we offer the Public Health Critical Race Praxis (PHCRP) and the PEN-3 Cultural Model as antiracism and decolonization tools that can jointly advance research on colonizatio…
Gender, power, and health
This collection offers approaches to reimagine and refine the the research agenda on gender as a determinant of health. • Methodological, conceptual, and practical challenges and opportunities in gender-related research reflect the multiple pathways through which gender influences health. • Attending to complex issues of gender and power, and advancing education on gender-related concepts, can improve population health and address health inequiti…
Gender health equity
United States' federal policy and infrastructure fail to explicitly consider the health of men, particularly the poor health of marginalized men. This inattention to men's health hinders the nation's ability to improve population health, to achieve gender health equity, and to achieve health equity more broadly. Expanding efforts to consider gender in federal policy and infrastructure to include men, naming men as a population whose poor health w…
Breaking Down Machismo
There is a notable gap in empirical research regarding how Latino men define and demonstrate machismo, masculinity, and manhood as well as the behavioral consequences associated with these concepts. In our study, we employed a phenomenological thematic approach to analyze 20 semi-structured individual interviews conducted with Latino men residing in South Florida. Our primary objectives were twofold: to examine (1) how do Latino men ages 35 to 60…
Mighty Men
Two in five African American men have obesity, but they are underrepresented in community-based weight loss interventions. This pilot effectiveness trial examines the acceptability and feasibility of the first weight loss study for African American men that includes randomization and individual tailoring. Using a community-based, cluster-randomized, longitudinal parallel group design, four churches were randomized to a control condition or a weig…
Fathers’ Perspectives on Fatherhood and Paternal Involvement During Pregnancy and Childbirth
There is limited research that specifically explores paternal involvement during pregnancy and childbirth. To address this gap, we completed a series of focus groups with fathers to examine social, cultural, and environmental factors that influence behaviors among new fathers while also providing community perspectives on men’s experiences seeking care pre- and postdelivery. We used a phenomenological thematic approach to analyze data from 10 foc…
Power, place, and access
Vaccines have played an essential role in curbing case and mortality rates due to SARS-CoV-2 in the United Sates. Still, many communities display high rates of unwillingness or inability to get a COVID-19 vaccine, limiting overall vaccination efforts and contributing to viral spread. Black Americans have expressed skepticism towards vaccines because of limited access to the technology, mistrust in its safety and efficacy, and a lack of confidence…
Individually Tailoring Messages to Promote African American Men’s Health
In this paper, we describe our approach to individualizing messages to promote the health of middle-aged and older heterosexual, cisgender African American men. After arguing the importance of being population specific, we describe the process we use to increase the salience of health messages for this population by operationalizing the identity concepts of centrality and contextualization. We also present a measure of African American manhood an…
Who Is Not Linking to HIV Care in Tennessee — the Benefits of an Intersectional Approach
Covid-19 and MENtal Health
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a source of stress and have important mental health implications for all persons but may have unique implications for men. In addition to the risk of contracting and dying from COVID-19, the rising COVID-19 death toll, ongoing economic uncertainty, loneliness from social distancing, and other changes to our lifestyles make up the perfect recipe for a decline in mental health. In June 2020, men reported slight…
Well-Being in Healthy People 2030
Healthy Men 2030
Keywords men's health equity, health disparities, health equity, health policy, health promotion, men's health, Healthy People
Beyond a Zero-Sum Game
Epidemics and pandemics, like COVID-19, are not gender neutral. Much of the current work on gender, sex, and COVID-19, however, has seemed implicitly or explicitly to be attempting to demonstrate that either men or women have been hardest hit, treating differences between women and men as though it is not important to understand how each group is affected by the virus. This approach often leaves out the effect on gender and sexual minorities enti…
African American manhood and self-rated health
Few studies have tested what aspects of manhood are associated with health. In this study, we examine how aspects of African American Manhood are related to health. Using cross-sectional data from a criterion sample of 300 African American men 35-73 years old (M = 46.53), we examined how aspects of African American Manhood, demographic characteristics, and health conditions were related to self-rated health. When we controlled for demographics, S…
Fostering Transnational Research Partnerships to Advance Men’s Health
Promoting Men’s Health Equity
Men’s health equity is an area of men’s health research and practice that combines the literature on men’s health with that of health equity. More research is needed that describes how to intervene to promote men’s health equity. This introduction to the American Journal of Men’s Health special collection on promoting men’s health equity was created to feature research that describes aspects of promising interventions that (a) are population-spec…
Developing a “Tailor-Made” Precision Lifestyle Medicine Intervention for Weight Control among Middle-aged Latino Men
We found key candidate mechanisms that may be novel yet critical foundations on which to build a precision lifestyle medicine intervention for Latino men. We identified actionable psychosocial factors that map onto motivational constructs that can shape behaviors that are essential for weight control and be a useful foundation for improving the health of middle-aged Latino men
Art, Anti-Racism and Health Equity
Art can be an important tool to facilitate moving past intellectual arguments that seek to explain, justify and excuse racism. Art may be particularly important in efforts to illuminate how racism operates in organizational or institutional contexts and to communicate hope, resilience, and strength amid what seems impossible
Sociopolitical Development as an Antidote for Oppression—Theory and Action
Although psychology has an ample vocabulary for describing individual pathologies, the development of theory and concepts for understanding societal pathology remains in its infancy. Because community psychology theory views human behavior in its context, it is essential that interventions not be limited to stress management, personal coping, and similar programming. Interventions should not leave social injustice undiscussed and unchallenged. In…
Tackling racism as a "wicked" public health problem
The Effects of Perceived Discrimination on Diabetes Management
We investigated whether self-reported racial/ethnic and gender discrimination were associated with lower rates of diabetes management. Analyses focused on 524 respondents with diabetes from the 2001 Commonwealth Health Care Quality Survey. Probit models estimated the marginal effect of self-reported racial/ethnic and gender discrimination on diabetes management, adjusting for racial/ethnic and gender concordance of the patient and physician, as w…
Dismantling institutional racism
Despite a strong commitment to promoting social change and liberation, there are few community psychology models for creating systems change to address oppression. Given how embedded racism is in institutions such as healthcare, a significant shift in the system's policies, practices, and procedures is required to address institutional racism and create organizational and institutional change. This paper describes a systemic intervention to addre…
Ethnicity, Nativity, and the Health of American Blacks
There have been few empirical studies of ethnic differences in health within the American Black population. Logistic regressions were used to examine the relationships among ethnicity, nativity, depressive symptoms, and physical health in the two largest ethnic groups of American Blacks, African Americans and Caribbean Blacks. The data were from the National Survey of American Life, a national household survey representative of the non-institutio…
If you do nothing about stress, the next thing you know, you're shattered
A Meta-Study of Black Male Mental Health and Well-Being
Aggregating and interpreting available qualitative data is a necessary next step to understanding the mental health needs and experiences of Black men. This study describes the findings from a meta-synthesis of qualitative research on Black men's mental health and well-being using Paterson, Thorne, Canam, and Jillings's qualitative meta-study approach. Though previous studies have reported various forms of racism as salient concerns for Black men…
The Effects of Race, Ethnicity, and Mood/Anxiety Disorders on the Chronic Physical Health Conditions of Men From a National Sample
Racial/ethnic differences in health are evident among men. Previous work suggests associations between mental and physical health but few studies have examined how mood/anxiety disorders and chronic physical health conditions covary by age, race, and ethnicity among men. Using data from 1,277 African American, 629 Caribbean Black, and 371 non-Hispanic White men from the National Survey of American Life, we examined associations between race/ethni…
Measuring Masculinity in Research on Men of Color
The purpose of this study was to examine the association between masculinity and the health of US men of color aged 18 years and older. We identified 22 population-based studies that included a measure of masculinity and a measure of health behavior, mental health, or physical health. The associations between masculinity and health were complex and varied by construct and health outcome, though they generally were significant in the hypothesized …
The Art and Science of Integrating Undoing Racism with CBPR
Social and Cultural Factors Influence African American Men’s Medical Help Seeking
Objective: To examine the factors that influenced African American men’s medical help seeking. Method: Thematic analysis of 14 focus groups with 105 older, urban African American men. Results: African American men described normative expectations that they did not go to the doctor and that they were afraid to go, with little explanation. When they did go, men reported that they were particularly uncomfortable with the tone physicians used when ta…
Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Men's Health
This study uses data from the Health and Retirement Study and an approach informed by the Biopsychosocial Model of Racism as a Stressor to examine the extent to which socioeconomic status, stressors, discrimination, and neighborhood conditions are mechanisms underlying racial/ethnic disparities in functional limitations among men. Results reveal that racial/ethnic differences in socioeconomic status, stressors, discrimination, and neighborhood co…
Health is the Ability to Manage Yourself Without Help”
These findings highlight key elements of how older African American men conceptualize health in ways that are interrelated with yet expand notions of successful aging in ways that are critical for health promotion research and interventions
Using national data sets to improve the health and mental health of Black Americans
National datasets provide a unique opportunity to examine racial and ethnic disparities in health and mental health. In this article, the authors discuss some of the ways in which national datasets can facilitate our understanding of key pathways and mechanisms that explain racial and ethnic disparities and some of the conceptual and measurement issues that continue to hinder disparities research. Utilizing infant mortality and major depression a…
What defines a man?”
Racism in organizations
Racism is part of the foundation of U.S. society and institutions, yet few studies in community psychology or organizational studies have examined how racism affects organizations. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of institutional racism, which describes how, in spite of professional standards and ethics, racism functions within organizations to adversely affect the quality of services, the organizational climate, and staff job satisfac…
Interactive Effect of Immigration-Related Factors with Legal and Discrimination Acculturative Stress in Predicting Depression Among Asian American Immigrants
Cohort and Duration Patterns Among Asian Immigrants
Many studies, but not all, suggest that immigrant health worsens with duration of residence in the United States. Cohort effects may explain the inconsistent findings; not only are cohort effects confounded with duration, but the timing of entry into the United States may also create qualitatively different migration experiences. The present study tests for duration and cohort patterns among Asian immigrants to the United States across six year-o…
Racial and gender disparities in sugar consumption change efficacy among first-year college students
Modeling the community-level effects of male incarceration on the sexual partnerships of men and women
Race, SES, and Obesity Among Men
Gender health equity
United States' federal policy and infrastructure fail to explicitly consider the health of men, particularly the poor health of marginalized men. This inattention to men's health hinders the nation's ability to improve population health, to achieve gender health equity, and to achieve health equity more broadly. Expanding efforts to consider gender in federal policy and infrastructure to include men, naming men as a population whose poor health w…
Psychosocial determinants of colorectal Cancer screening uptake among African-American men
Despite CRC screening's life-saving potential, African-American men have had the lowest 5-year relative survival for more than 40 years. When developing interventions and health promotion programs aiming to eliminate the racial disparity in CRC outcomes, addressing both masculine role norms and medical mistrust barriers to CRC screening completion among African-American men is warranted
Using mixed methods to understand women's parenting practices related to their child's outdoor play and physical activity among families living in diverse neighborhood environments
A convergent parallel mixed methods design was used to understand parenting practices for outdoor play, their influence on adolescent's physical activity and outdoor play and the role of the neighborhood and child's sex. Adolescents (n = 263) and their parents completed questionnaires and wore accelerometers. Parents (n = 30) participated in in-depth interviews. Parenting practices were examined by neighborhood disadvantage and child's sex in qua…
African American manhood and self-rated health
Few studies have tested what aspects of manhood are associated with health. In this study, we examine how aspects of African American Manhood are related to health. Using cross-sectional data from a criterion sample of 300 African American men 35-73 years old (M = 46.53), we examined how aspects of African American Manhood, demographic characteristics, and health conditions were related to self-rated health. When we controlled for demographics, S…
Sociopolitical Development as an Antidote for Oppression—Theory and Action
Although psychology has an ample vocabulary for describing individual pathologies, the development of theory and concepts for understanding societal pathology remains in its infancy. Because community psychology theory views human behavior in its context, it is essential that interventions not be limited to stress management, personal coping, and similar programming. Interventions should not leave social injustice undiscussed and unchallenged. In…
Community-based Participatory Research: Assessing the Evidence: Evidence Report/Technology Assessment, Number 99
The Art and Science of Integrating Undoing Racism with CBPR
Dismantling institutional racism
Despite a strong commitment to promoting social change and liberation, there are few community psychology models for creating systems change to address oppression. Given how embedded racism is in institutions such as healthcare, a significant shift in the system's policies, practices, and procedures is required to address institutional racism and create organizational and institutional change. This paper describes a systemic intervention to addre…
Racism in organizations
Racism is part of the foundation of U.S. society and institutions, yet few studies in community psychology or organizational studies have examined how racism affects organizations. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of institutional racism, which describes how, in spite of professional standards and ethics, racism functions within organizations to adversely affect the quality of services, the organizational climate, and staff job satisfac…
Challenges and Lessons Learned in Developing a Community-Based Health Survey
Through these two survey development processes, we learned three key lessons: To regularly examine our partnership and process; to communicate directly with and obtain the support of each individual partner; and to focus on building the capacity of the partners and partnership
The Effects of Perceived Discrimination on Diabetes Management
We investigated whether self-reported racial/ethnic and gender discrimination were associated with lower rates of diabetes management. Analyses focused on 524 respondents with diabetes from the 2001 Commonwealth Health Care Quality Survey. Probit models estimated the marginal effect of self-reported racial/ethnic and gender discrimination on diabetes management, adjusting for racial/ethnic and gender concordance of the patient and physician, as w…
Factors Associated with Breast Cancer Screening in Asian Indian Women in Metro-Detroit
Sexual and alcohol risk behaviours of immigrant Latino men in the South‐eastern USA
Little is known about the intersections of immigration, masculinity and sexual risk behaviours among recently arrived Latino men in the USA. Nine immigrant Latino men from three urban housing communities in the South-eastern USA used photovoice to identify and explore their lived experiences. From the participants' photographs and words, thirteen themes emerged within four domains. The immigration experience and sociocultural norms and expectatio…
The Origins and Overview of the W. K. Kellogg Community Health Scholars Program
The CHSP has had an impact on academic institutions, community-based organizations (CBOs), policies relating to research funding and implementation, and professional organizations (e.g., founded the Community-Based Public Health Caucus of the American Public Health Association). As the result of the continued interaction of CHSP alumni and their academic and community mentors and partners, that which began as a training program evolved into much …
Using national data sets to improve the health and mental health of Black Americans
National datasets provide a unique opportunity to examine racial and ethnic disparities in health and mental health. In this article, the authors discuss some of the ways in which national datasets can facilitate our understanding of key pathways and mechanisms that explain racial and ethnic disparities and some of the conceptual and measurement issues that continue to hinder disparities research. Utilizing infant mortality and major depression a…
Prayer and Spiritual Practices for Health Reasons among American Adults
Community-Based Organizational Capacity Building as a Strategy to Reduce Racial Health Disparities
Social and Cultural Factors Influence African American Men’s Medical Help Seeking
Objective: To examine the factors that influenced African American men’s medical help seeking. Method: Thematic analysis of 14 focus groups with 105 older, urban African American men. Results: African American men described normative expectations that they did not go to the doctor and that they were afraid to go, with little explanation. When they did go, men reported that they were particularly uncomfortable with the tone physicians used when ta…
A Meta-Study of Black Male Mental Health and Well-Being
Aggregating and interpreting available qualitative data is a necessary next step to understanding the mental health needs and experiences of Black men. This study describes the findings from a meta-synthesis of qualitative research on Black men's mental health and well-being using Paterson, Thorne, Canam, and Jillings's qualitative meta-study approach. Though previous studies have reported various forms of racism as salient concerns for Black men…
Involving Faith-Based Organizations in Adolescent HIV Prevention
Study findings demonstrate that faith leaders who participate in specific and ongoing HIV prevention education training can be useful sexual health resources for youth in faith-based settings. Implications for research and practice highlight the advantages of continued partnerships between FBOs and public health professionals in future HIV prevention efforts for adolescents
Ethnicity, Nativity, and the Health of American Blacks
There have been few empirical studies of ethnic differences in health within the American Black population. Logistic regressions were used to examine the relationships among ethnicity, nativity, depressive symptoms, and physical health in the two largest ethnic groups of American Blacks, African Americans and Caribbean Blacks. The data were from the National Survey of American Life, a national household survey representative of the non-institutio…
Race, SES, and Obesity Among Men
Men and Their Father Figures
Measuring Masculinity in Research on Men of Color
The purpose of this study was to examine the association between masculinity and the health of US men of color aged 18 years and older. We identified 22 population-based studies that included a measure of masculinity and a measure of health behavior, mental health, or physical health. The associations between masculinity and health were complex and varied by construct and health outcome, though they generally were significant in the hypothesized …
The Experience of Symptoms of Depression in Men vs Women
Importance When men are depressed they may experience symptoms that are different than what is included in the current diagnostic criteria. Objective To explore whether sex disparities in depression rates disappear when alternative symptoms are considered in the place of, or in addition to, more conventional depression symptoms. Design, Setting, Participants, and Main Outcomes and Measures Using data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replicati…
Incarceration and Sexual Risk
The Effects of Race, Ethnicity, and Mood/Anxiety Disorders on the Chronic Physical Health Conditions of Men From a National Sample
Racial/ethnic differences in health are evident among men. Previous work suggests associations between mental and physical health but few studies have examined how mood/anxiety disorders and chronic physical health conditions covary by age, race, and ethnicity among men. Using data from 1,277 African American, 629 Caribbean Black, and 371 non-Hispanic White men from the National Survey of American Life, we examined associations between race/ethni…
Discussing Adolescent Sexual Health in African-American Churches
Weight Status and Blood Pressure among Adolescent African American Males
Additional studies are needed to specify the manner through which excess weight and weight gain can accelerate the development and progression of CVD-related diseases among African American males over the life course, thereby providing evidenced-based information for tailored interventions that can reduce risks for premature morbidity, disability, and mortality among this group
Medicine (63 works) · Psychology (55 works) · Sociology (48 works) · Gerontology (41 works) · Public health (32 works) · Political science (27 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Demography (19 works) · Health equity (19 works) · Environmental health (18 works)