I am a medical anthropologist working at the intersection of cultural and biological anthropology.

My research draws on methods and theory from the social and biological sciences and focuses on contributions in four areas:

• clarifying the relations between race, racism, and biology

• integrating multilevel approaches to health and human development

• facilitating participatory approaches to anthropological research

• advancing the development of systematic ethnographic methods.

HOW RACE BECOMES BIOLOGY

The primary focus of my research is to identify and address the social and cultural causes of racial inequalities in health. This goal is important for both practical and theoretical reasons. As a practical matter, the scale of inequalities in sickness and death demands research and action. As a theoretical matter, the link between race and health highlights shortcomings in the refrain that race is a cultural construct, not biology: If race is not biology, some may ask, why are there such stark differences among racially defined groups in a wide range of biological outcomes?

My empirical research in Puerto Rico and the mainland United States answers this question in three ways: (1) by examining the cultural construction of race in biomedicine, (2) by advancing the critique of racial-genetic determinism, and (3) by showing how the enduring sociocultural reality of race and racism become embodied—literally—in individual biology.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

• Gravlee, Clarence C. (2009). How race becomes biology: Embodiment of social inequality. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 138: 47–57.

• Gravlee, Clarence C., William W. Dressler, and H. Russell Bernard. (2005). Skin color, social classification, and blood pressure in Puerto Rico. American Journal of Public Health 95(12):2191-2197.

• Dressler, William W., Kathryn S. Oths, and Clarence C. Gravlee. Race and ethnicity in public health research: Models to explain health disparities. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:231-252.

• Gravlee, Clarence C, Amy L. Non, and Connie J. Mulligan. (2009). Genetic ancestry, social classification, and racial inequalities in blood pressure in Southeastern Puerto Rico. PLoS ONE 4 (9): e6821.

• Quinlan, Jacklyn, Laurel N. Pearson, Christopher J. Clukay, Miaisha M. Mitchell, P. Qasimah Boston, Clarence C. Gravlee, and Connie J. Mulligan (2016). Genetic Loci and Novel Discrimination Measures Associated with Blood Pressure Variation in African Americans Living in Tallahassee. PLoS ONE 11 (12): e0167700.

INTEGRATIVE BIOCULTURAL APPROACHES

A closely related theme of my research is the development of integrative, biocultural approaches to health and human development. This aspect of my work is evident in my research on health in the African Diaspora. My work in Puerto Rico operationalized the distinction between cultural and biological dimensions of skin color and drew attention to the biological consequences of cultural constructs like “race.” My research in Detroit confirmed the influence of both individual-level and social-structural contributors to heart disease. And my most recent work in Tallahassee, in collaboration with Connie Mulligan’s lab at UF, integrates multiple level of analysis—molecular, physiological, behavioral, cultural, social-structural—to test how exposure to racism and other social stressors increases the risk of high blood pressure and other health conditions among African Americans in Tallahassee.

A biocultural approach is also evident in past work with the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS) in Bolivia. TAPS aimed to understand the consequences of globalization and market exposure on well-being and resource use among the Tsimane’, an indigenous society in lowland Bolivia. My contribution to the project involved testing the role of cultural consonance on indicators of physical and mental health.

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

• Non, Amy L., Clarence C. Gravlee, Connie J. Mulligan. (2012). Education, genetic ancestry, and blood pressure in African Americans and Whites. American Journal of Public Health, 102(8), 1559-1565.

• Gravlee, Clarence C. and William W. Dressler. (2005). Skin pigmentation, self-perceived color, and arterial blood pressure in Puerto Rico. American Journal of Human Biology 17(2):195-206.

• Schulz, Amy J., Clarence C. Gravlee, David R. Williams, Barbara A. Israel, Zachary Rowe. (2006). Discrimination, symptoms of depression, and self-rated health among African American women in Detroit: Results from a longitudinal analysis. American Journal of Public Health 96(6):1265-1270.

• Reyes-García, Victoria, Clarence C. Gravlee, Thomas W. McDade, Tomás Huanca, William R. Leonard, Susan Tanner, and TAPS Bolivian Research Team. (2010). Cultural consonance and body morphology: Estimates with longitudinal data from an Amazonian society. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 143(2), 167-174.

• Reyes-Garcia, Victoria, Clarence C. Gravlee, Thomas W. McDade, Tomas Huanca, Williams R. Leonard, and Susan Tanner (2010). Cultural consonance and psychological well-being: estimates with longitudinal data from an Amazonian society. Culture, Medicine & Psychiatry, 34(1), 186–203.

PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES TO HEALTH EQUITY

In 2008, I co-founded (with Ms. Miaisha Mitchell, a community organizer) the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee (HEAT), a community-academic partnership grounded in principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR). HEAT strives to bridge the gap between research and action and to nurture equitable collaboration between researchers, community members, and policymakers in all phases of research—from design to dissemination.

HEAT has been involved in three major research and training initiatives, in addition to many community engagement events. The first initiative is HEAT Heart Health, an action-oriented study on the role of racism-related stressors on heart health among African Americans in Tallahassee. Second is a focus on how the food environment contributes to health inequities and how organizing around food justice can stimulate grassroots resistance. The third initiative was the NSF-funded HEAT Ethnographic Field School, which brought PhD students in cultural anthropology and allied disciplines to Tallahassee for five summers during 2012—2017. The participatory framework of the field school has been featured in recent methods texts, including Applied Ethnography (Pelto, 2016) and Ethnography in Action: A Mixed Methods Approach (Schensul and LeCompte, 2016).

REPRESENTATIVE PUBLICATIONS

• Gravlee, C. C., Szurek, S. M., & Mitchell, M. M. (2015). Integrating methods training and community-based participatory research: The NSF-supported ethnographic field school in Tallahassee, Florida. Practicing Anthropology, 37(4), 4–8.

• Boston, P. Q., Mitchell, M. M., Collum, K., & Gravlee, C. C. (2015). Community engagement and health equity. Practicing Anthropology, 37(4), 28–32.

• Gravlee, Clarence C., P. Qasimah Boston, M. Miaisha Mitchell, Alan F. Schultz, and Connie Betterley. (2014). Food store owners’ and managers’ perspectives on the food environment: an exploratory mixed-methods study. BMC Public Health, 14(1), 1031.

ADVANCING SYSTEMATIC ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS