Associate Professor Summer Sherburne Hawkins, PhD, MS, is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine from Boston College. She is a social epidemiologist with an interest in addressing policy-relevant research questions in maternal and child health.
She is currently on the editorial board of 'Maternal and Child Nutrition' and an active member of the University Research Council at Boston College. Prior to joining Boston College School of Social Work, she was a Cohort 7 Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at the Harvard School of Public Health from 2009-2011.
Research
Summer's research examines the impact of policies on health disparities in parents and children, particularly using methodology that integrates epidemiology and economics.
She has published on the topics of parental and adolescent tobacco use, infant feeding practices, and childhood obesity as well as the impact of state and local policies on disparities in these health behaviours and outcomes.
A more recent area of her research focuses on the role of the Affordable Care Act on the uptake of preventive health services. In January 2017, she received a 3-year grant from the American Cancer Society titled, Impact of the ACA on the prevention and early detection of women’s cancers.