Naomi Nichele Duke

Dr. Naomi Nichele Duke, MD, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor. Working at the intersection of medicine, sociology, and population health, Dr. Duke brings a unique perspective to address social drivers in maternal and child health and adult chronic disease onset. Her work focuses on advancing knowledge and advocacy efforts around the relevance of childhood social context for later disparities in health outcomes and the intergenerational transmission of health, including morbidity and mortality related to stress physiology, perceptions of physical and emotional weathering, and health-related behaviors. A main area of interest is in understanding the implications of youth experiences of oppression and marginalization for perceptions of survival and future orientation, and relationships between these experiences and actual trajectories of health. Her work includes focus on understanding relationships between shared sociocultural context and concordance and discordance in cardiometabolic outcomes across generations, including the transition from prediabetes to diabetes and timing in the development of hypertension. Dr. Duke is an academic affiliate with four multidisciplinary research collaborations: the Duke University Population Research Institute, the Duke Center for Child & Family Policy, the Duke Children’s Health & Discovery Initiative, and the Duke Center for Childhood Obesity Research.