YSPH SBS Virtual 525 Seminar Series: Skyler Jackson, “Drawing outside of the lines: Intricate identities, intersectional stressors, and the complexity of stigma in public health.”

Dr. Skyler Jackson is an Associate Research Scientist within the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health and an affiliate of the Yale Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS. His research focuses on understanding the psychosocial mechanisms through which experiences of stigma (e.g., racism, sexism, homophobia) shape health outcomes—and intervening upon them to improve the health and resilience of marginalized populations. Relying on a broad range of methodological approaches (e.g., microlongitudinal, qualitative, mixed methods), Dr. Jackson's current projects explore how experiences of stigma-related stress—if not adequately coped with—interfere with psychological functioning and contribute to health disparities. In particular, he focuses on complex, understudied manifestations of stigma across racial, sexual, and gender minority populations, including (a) intersectional stress among individuals holding multiple marginalized identities (e.g., LGBTQ people of color, Black women), and (b) border identity stress among populations holding identities that defy binary categorization (e.g., multiracial people, bisexuals, gender nonbinary individuals). Increasingly, Dr. Jackson’s work has focused on the development of culturally-attuned, stigma coping interventions to address the intersectional determinants of health among multiply oppressed populations. In addition to other internal and external grants, he recently received a four-year NIMH K01 Award (2020-2024) to further his intervention research among Black and Latinx sexual minority men, entitled “Intersectional stigma, mental health, and HIV risk among US gay and bisexual men of color” (1K01MH122316-01A1).