Social determinants of health
Professor Torres Stone’s central research focus is on the complex social and structural inequities in the fields of health and mental health well-being, with particular emphasis on racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States.
In addition, community engaged research and social policy have been at the heart of her scientific career, as community-based approaches are essential to finding sustainable solutions that are effective in bringing positive change. She has had the privilege of guided training in the grounded discipline of Sociology and of working at Clark University, a setting devoted to public health and social policy. Together, the findings from her work reveal major public health challenges which reinforce the need for appropriate social policies and programs to mitigate health risks that emanate from the social determinants of health for underserved populations. This collaborative research in the domains of public health and social policy has produced a series of publications in interdisciplinary journals.
Community health needs assessments
Over the last seven years, she has been involved in three community needs assessments and has developed strong research collaborations with multiple community stakeholders in the City of Worcester. Community needs assessments provide community leaders a snapshot of needs, gaps, assets and resources currently in place and help to identify strategies (policy, systems or environmental) in the community for positive and sustainable change. Community health assessments she has helped lead include gathering community input on health needs of immigrant and refugee and unhoused populations in Worcester, and on willingness of community members to engage in specific health-related initiatives. These university-community partnerships are critical to translating findings into initiatives designed to improve the health and mental health system of vulnerable populations. Professor Torres Stone’s work on cultural identities, acculturation and legal status as related to psychological distress brings attention to how in creating varied experiences of educational inclusion and exclusion, institutional and geographic context can heighten or ameliorate the stressors undocumented college students face and the coping strategies they implement to manage their precarious legal status.
Structural racism and COVID-19
Professor Torres Stone, Nathan Ahlgren and Philip Bergmann, Clark Professors of Biology, examined the impact of structural racism against Black Americans on the rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths at the county-level, as assessed by Black–White differences in multiple measures relevant to manifestations of racism (residential segregation, health, education, employment, and incarceration) while controlling for other known factors associated with risk of COVID-19 infection and death. They found that disparities in incarceration rates and educational attainment between Black and White Americans appear to be particularly impactful. We proposed that to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 infections and deaths requires that we acknowledge and address a longstanding history of discriminatory social, criminal and housing practices and policies against Black Americans. This work was published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2023. They also o co-authored a paper published in PLOS Global Public Health, 2023 which found that temporal changes and differences in how particular population segments are infected and die from COVID-19 are critical to informing policy and practice behind mitigation efforts, especially in resource-limited scenarios such as a pandemic. Our findings from this work provide support for targeted policies and interventions that change as a pandemic unfolds to mitigate its disproportionate effects on vulnerable populations particularly during the first six months of a pandemic. Her work will continue to reveal the societal forces and policies that can help to mitigate health disparities and improve provisions within health, community settings and clinical settings.