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Overview


Fatima G. Fairfax is a PhD candidate in sociology at Duke University. Her research focuses on the impact of healthcare technologies on existing health(care) quality and disparities in the U.S. Her work sits at the intersection of medical sociology; science, knowledge, and technology; race, and inequality studies. Her dissertation work explores how technologies used at three different levels (patients, providers, and hospital systems) may impact healthcare outcomes for patients and effects disparities in care. In her other active projects, she explores how future tech developers make sense of bias in computing and technological projects, and how we understand and measure racial disparities in health with more nuanced definitions of racial identity. Her work is supported by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s (NASEM) Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship.

Prior to her doctoral studies, she worked for New Profit, a venture philanthropy firm, as a manager on the Measurement and Evaluation team. She graduated with a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University in 2018.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Recent Publications


Sharing Patient-Generated Health Data: The Role of Healthcare Quality, Mistrust, and Discrimination Across Race-Gender Identities.

Journal Article Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · March 2025 The widespread adoption of personal health devices has introduced a new source of health data for patients and providers to use in healthcare settings. Using patient-generated health data (PGHD) in healthcare settings has been found to improve patient-prov ... Full text Cite

Hidden Heterogeneity: How the White Racial Category Masks Interethnic Health Inequality.

Journal Article Demography · February 2025 Inequality research has often used non-Hispanic Whites as the reference category in measuring U.S. racial and ethnic health disparities, with less attention paid to diversity among Whites. Immigration patterns over the last several decades have led to grea ... Full text Open Access Cite
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