I'm Clifford Ross and am currently working as postdoctoral scholar on the HEAL project at Vanderbilt University. I received my PhD in medical sociology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in August 2024. In a general sense, my research focuses on ways in which large structural institutions influence the general health and well-being of individuals. Because interactions with larger economic structures are complex and multifaceted, my work emphasizes ways in which an individual’s social and physical environment overlap to help shape this relationship. Using a sequence analysis approach, my dissertation utilized 40 years of labor force participation data to better understand how specific social factors (race, gender, motherhood, and union membership) help shape an individual’s working history and how these histories influence midlife health.

Not related to my dissertation research, I have also worked on several other research projects:

• The relationship between sustained union membership and midlife earnings.

• The impact of unintended childbearing and midlife debt.

• Social factors influencing the effectiveness of modern cystic fibrosis therapies.

Having grown up in a small fringe town in Idaho, I had never heard of sociology before taking a university-mandated social science course. Thinking about my own lived experiences within a larger social context for the first time led to a passion for sociological thought.