Scholars@Duke
Jen'nan Read

Jen'nan Read CV

Professor of Sociology
Sociology
jennan.read@duke.edu
140 Reuben-Cooke BLD, Box 90088, Durham, NC 27708
CV

Selected Publications

Does an Immigrant Health Advantage Exist Among US Whites? Evidence from a Nationally-Representative Examination of Mental and Physical Well-Being.

Journal Article Journal of immigrant and minority health · October 2024 This study examines whether an immigrant health advantage exists among US Whites, a group often used as a reference category in research on racial and ethnic health disparities. Using recent data from the National Health Interview Survey (2019-2022), I dis ... Full text Open Access Cite

Racial and gender differences in discrimination and psychological distress among young adults.

Journal Article Social science & medicine (1982) · August 2024 Racial and gender differences in the effects of discrimination on health are well-established. The evidence has derived largely from studies of older adults, with less attention paid to younger adults. The current study takes an intersectional approach to ... Full text Cite

Disaggregating Heterogeneity among Non-Hispanic Whites: Evidence and Implications for U.S. Racial/Ethnic Health Disparities.

Journal Article Popul Res Policy Rev · February 2021 Research has made strides in disaggregating health data among racial/ethnic minorities, but less is known about the extent of diversity among Whites. Using logistic regression modeling applied to data on respondents aged 40+ from the 2008 to 2016 American ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

The Critical Role of Racial/Ethnic Data Disaggregation for Health Equity.

Journal Article Population research and policy review · January 2021 Population-level health outcomes and measures of well-being are often described relative to broad racial/ethnic categories such as White or Caucasian; Black or African American; Latino or Hispanic; Asian American; Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander; or A ... Full text Cite

Immigration and health among non-Hispanic whites: The impact of arrival cohort and region of birth.

Journal Article Soc Sci Med · February 2020 Immigration is central to our understanding of U.S. racial and ethnic health disparities, yet relatively little is known about the health of white immigrants - a group whose ethnic origins have become increasingly diverse. To the extent that whites are inc ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Disparities in functional disability among Arab Americans by nativity, immigrant arrival cohort, and country of birth.

Journal Article SSM Popul Health · April 2019 This study contributes to a growing literature that documents the importance of arrival cohort and country of birth for differentiating the health of U.S. immigrants. We use nationally-representative data from nine years of the American Community Survey (2 ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Gender and national origin differences in healthcare utilization among U.S. Immigrants from Mexico, China, and India.

Journal Article Ethnicity & health · November 2018 ObjectivesTo examine gender and national origin differences in the healthcare utilization of immigrants from the three largest populations in the U.S. today (Mexico, China, and India) and to determine if barriers to utilization operate similarly a ... Full text Cite

Household Charitable Giving at the Intersection of Gender, Marital Status, and Religion

Journal Article Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly · February 1, 2018 Past research reveals mixed results regarding the relationship between gender and charitable giving. We show gender plays a significant role in giving but only when considered alongside marital status and religion. Using the 2006 Portraits of American Life ... Full text Open Access Cite

Muslim integration in the United States and England: The role of Islamic schools

Chapter · January 1, 2018 Debates over faith-based education have resurfaced in recent years, due to an increase in Islamic schools in the west and concerns over their potential negative influence on Muslim youth. To date, most of these debates have occurred in the public and polit ... Full text Cite

The Health Gender Gap: A Constrained Choice Explanation. A Constrained Choice Explanation.

Chapter · January 4, 2017 This chapter reviews a growing body of international research that documents a puzzling pattern of gender differences in health and considers the limitations of current explanations. Such limitations derive from a failure to capture the complexity of men's ... Full text Cite

Gender and the Mental–Physical Health Connection Among U.S. Adults

Journal Article Sociological Forum · December 1, 2016 Using data from the 1995, 1998, and 2001 panels of Aging, Status, and Sense of Control (ASOC) Survey, we examine gender differences in the relationship between self-rated physical health and mental health over time (n = 2,543). Gender-stratified path model ... Full text Cite

Region of origin diversity in immigrant health: Moving beyond the Mexican case.

Journal Article Social science & medicine (1982) · October 2016 Research suggests that Mexican immigrants arrive in the United States with equivalent or better health than native-born whites but lose their advantage over time. We seek to examine systematically how well the patterns of initial advantage and deterioratin ... Full text Cite

Islamic schools in the United States and England: Implications for integration and social cohesion

Journal Article Social Compass · December 1, 2015 Debates over faith-based schools have resurfaced in recent years, due largely to an increase in Islamic schools in the West and concerns regarding their role vis-a-vis social cohesion. Such debates typically occur in the public and political realms, with l ... Full text Cite

Effectiveness of the Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus protocol in enhancing the function of an Emergency Department in Qatar.

Journal Article European journal of emergency medicine : official journal of the European Society for Emergency Medicine · October 2015 ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) surveillance protocol in the Emergency Department (ED) at Hamad General Hospital. Effectiveness was measured by: (a) reduction ... Full text Cite

Gender, religious identity, and civic engagement among Arab muslims in the United States

Journal Article Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review · January 1, 2015 Research on the civic engagement of Arab Muslims is scarce relative to studies on other U.S. populations, and knowledge about women's participation is particularly limited. Stereotypes often depict this group as detached from American society, yet few stud ... Full text Cite

Arab Americans and gender

Chapter · November 1, 2014 Gender roles and expectations in which the behaviors of women hold substantially more meaning than those of men have enormous importance for Arab Americans. Gender ideas inform a multiplicity of matters of appropriateness, including public behavior, social ... Full text Cite

In search of sociological congruence

Journal Article Social Currents · February 1, 2014 In this article, I explore how the fragmented and specialized character of sociology has resulted in the search for overly simplistic causal processes or “congruence.” The core argument focuses less on the structure of the discipline, per se, and more on s ... Full text Cite

Determinants of non-urgent Emergency Department attendance among females in Qatar.

Journal Article Qatar medical journal · January 2014 BackgroundThe use of emergency department (ED) services for non-urgent conditions is well-studied in many Western countries but much less so in the Middle East and Gulf region. While the consequences are universal-a drain on ED resources and poor ... Full text Cite

Measuring Ethnicity with U.S. Census Data: Implications for Mexicans and Arabs

Journal Article Population Research and Policy Review · August 1, 2013 U.S. racial and ethnic populations can be defined by a number of census questions-race/ethnicity, ancestry, place of birth, and/or language-but little is known about how using alternative definitions of identity affect the size and characteristics of diffe ... Full text Cite

Religion, family, and women's employment among Muslim and Christian Arab Americans

Chapter · December 1, 2010 Religious influences on family and gender roles are at the center of numerous debates about the role of religion in contemporary American life (Bartkowski 2001; Gallagher 2003; Hardacre 1997; Sherkat 2000; Williams 1997). The accepted wisdom is that the te ... Cite

Intersecting Identities as a Source of Religious Incongruence

Journal Article American Sociological Association · 2010 Cite

Healthy Migrants or Just Healthy Men?

Journal Article Population Association of America · 2010 Cite

Gender and U.S. Health Inequality

Journal Article Annual Review of Sociology · 2010 This review synthesizes gender differences in U.S. health and systematically examines the attention that gender has received in the sociological literature on health disparities over the past three decades. Its goal is to map where we have been in order to ... Cite

Gender, Acculturation and Health among Mexican American Immigrants

Journal Article Journal of Health & Social Behavior · 2010 This study examines whether the relationship between acculturation and physical health varies by gender among Mexican Americans, and if the mechanisms that mediate the acculturation-health relationship operate differently by gender. Using the 1998–2007 Nat ... Cite

Intersecting Identities as a Source of Religious Incongruence

Journal Article Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion · 2010 In a recent article, Chaves (2010) argues that much of the work in the sociology of religion is susceptible to the religious congruence fallacy–the tendency to assume consistency between religious beliefs and one’s attitudes and behaviors across situations ... Cite

Muslims seen as outsiders

Other Philadelphia Inquirer · 2009 Cite

Movement in the Right Direction

Other Social Science Research Council Immanent Frame · 2009 Cite

Reason to Remain Hopeful

Other Social Science Research Council Immanent Frame · 2009 Cite

Are U.S. Muslims Un-American

Other Raleigh News & Obsever, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Detroit Free Press, Des Moines · November 2008 Cite

U.S. Muslims could Swing the Vote

Other Philadelphia Inquirer, Raleigh News & Obsever, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette · October 2008 Cite

Gender and the Education-Employment Paradox in Ethnic and Religious Contexts: The Case of Arab Americans

Journal Article American Sociological Review · April 2008 Education is weakly correlated with employment for some groups of U.S. women, and thus it may be less of a resource for reducing gender inequality than commonly believed. Drawing on ethnographic field notes and in-depth interviews with Arab Americans, we r ... Cite

The Changing Face of Americans: Gender and the Health Policy Implications of

Journal Article American Sociological Association · 2008 Cite

North American Islam

Chapter · 2008 Cite

Faith, Fact, and Fiction: What Muslim Americans Really Mean for U.S. Democracy

Journal Article Contexts · 2008 Seven years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks catapulted Muslims into the American spotlight, concerns and fears over their presence and assimilation remain at an all-time high. Yet, research on Muslim Americans themselves shows they are diverse, well-integ ... Cite

Why Men Die Younger than Women

Journal Article Geriatrics & Aging · March 2007 Men have shorter life expectancies than women in most nations around the world. The gender gap in mortality is particularly striking in high-income industrialized nations such as the United States, where women were expected to live 5.3 years longer than me ... Cite

Racial/ethnic differences in hypertension and depression among US adult women.

Journal Article Ethnicity & disease · January 2007 ObjectivesThis study assesses racial/ethnic differences in the odds of hypertension among US adult women and examines the degree to which depression, in addition to demographic, socioeconomic status, and health lifestyle characteristics, account f ... Cite

One Size Fits All? Explaining U.S.-born and Immigrant Women’s Employment across 12 Ethnic Groups

Journal Article Social Forces · 2007 Leading explanations for ethnic disparities in U.S. women’s employment derive largely from research on men. Although recent case studies of newer immigrant groups suggest that these explanations may be less applicable than previously believed, no study to ... Cite

More of a Bridge than a Gap: Gender Differences in Arab-American Political Engagement.

Journal Article Social Science Quarterly (Blackwell Publishing Limited) · 2007 Objective. Research on immigrant women’s economic and cultural adaptation has increasingly come to the fore of immigration research, yet relatively little remains known about their engagement in the political arena. This study examines this question among ... Cite

Introduction: The Politics of Veiling in Comparative Perspective.

Journal Article Sociology of Religion · 2007 The article focuses on the state of Islam in 2007. Particular attention is given to the international awareness and interest in Muslim populations after the U.S. terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This interest has only increased due to the ongoing w ... Cite

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Hypertension and Depression among US Adult Women

Journal Article Ethnicity & Disease · 2007 OBJECTIVES: This study assesses racial/ethnic differences in the odds of hypertension among US adult women and examines the degree to which depression, in addition to demographic, socioeconomic status, and health lifestyle characteristics, account for obse ... Cite

Gender Disparities in Adult Health: An Examination of Three Measures of Morbidity

Journal Article Journal of Health and Social Behavior · July 2006 Recent examinations of gender differences in physical health suggest that women’s disadvantage may be smaller than previously assumed, varying by health status measure and age. Using data from the 1997–2001 National Health Interview Surveys, we examine gen ... Cite

Gender Inequalities in US Adult Health: The Interplay of Race and Ethnicity

Journal Article Social Science & Medicine · 2006 Gender differences in adult health are well documented, but only recently has research begun to investigate how race and ethnicity condition gendered health disparities. This paper contributes to this line of inquiry by assessing gender differences in morb ... Cite

Implications of Black Immigrant Health for U.S. Racial Disparities in Health

Journal Article Journal of Immigrant Health · July 2005 This paper contributes to a growing understanding of U.S. black-white health disparities by using national-level data to disaggregate the health status of black Americans into the following subgroups: U.S.-born blacks, black immigrants from Africa, black i ... Cite

Arab Immigrants: A New Case for Ethnicity and Health?

Journal Article Social Science & Medicine · 2005 Community-based studies of Arab Americans point to significant health problems among the immigrants, a finding that runs contrary to theories of immigrant selectivity. This study is the first to use nationally representative data to test this question. Usi ... Cite

Racial Context, Black Immigration and the U.S. Black/White Health Disparity.

Journal Article Social Forces · 2005 The United States’ black/white health gap is an important consequence of racial inequality. The gap is large, shows little signs of declining, and explanations have been limited by lack of theory and data. A new direction that offers potential for theoreti ... Cite

Family, Religion, and Work Among Arab-American Women

Journal Article Journal of Marriage and Family · 2004 Using data from a national survey of 501 Arab American women, this study examines the extent to which family behavior mediates the influence of religion on women’s labor force activity. Prior research on families has largely overlooked the role of religion ... Cite

“Identity Politics among Arab-American Women

Journal Article Social Science Quarterly · 2003 Cite