Kerith Conron

Blachford-Cooper Distinguished Scholar & Research Director, The Williams Institute

  • B.A. Mary Washington College, 1994
  • M.P.H. Boston University School of Public Health, 1997
  • Sc.D. Harvard School of Public Health, 2007

Kerith Conron, ScD, MPH is the Blachford-Cooper Distinguished Scholar and Research Director at the Charles R. Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy. She is a social and psychiatric epidemiologist whose work focuses on documenting and reducing inequities that impact sexual and gender minority populations. She is committed to altering the landscape of adversity and opportunity for LGBTQ communities, particularly through collaboration. Dr. Conron developed one of the nation’s first gender identity-based homeless shelter protocols as Boston’s first LGBT Health Coordinator and served on the inaugural Steering Committee of the National Coalition for LGBT Health. She is co-PI of the NICHD/NIMHD-funded Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity, Socioeconomic Status, and Health across the Life Course (SOGI-SES) study. Dr. Conron has also been supported by NICHD to train scholars in LGBT population health research and by NIMHD to improve the health of LGBTQ youth of color. She completed graduate work at the Harvard and Boston University Schools of Public Health. Her publications appear in the American Journal of Public Health, Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, and Psychological Medicine. Her expertise and commentary have been featured by the New York Times, the Associated Press, and National Public Radio. Dr. Conron is also affiliated with the Fenway Institute, Boston, the Heller School for Social Policy, Waltham, MA, and the Department of Maternal and Child Health at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.