David Rehkopf joins the Department of Sociology

We are pleased to announce that David Rehkopf is – effective April 1, 2026 – a member of the Department of Sociology at Stanford University.  A huge welcome to David!!!! David is Director of the Center for Population Health Sciences, co-Director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Population Health (where he’ll maintain a 50 percent appointment).  A prodigious amount of influential research comes out of the Rehkopf lab, research that’s committed to (a) building a new basic science of the macro-level effects of policy, institutions, and corporations on human health, (b) building new data systems that harness the power of linking data, and (c) exploiting this new science and data to support interventions and policies that improve health.  He carries out research on economic and racial disparities in health, trends in mortality, the health effects of cash transfers, the health effects of education, the early warning signs of systemic disease, the health payoff to social support, and oh-so-much more.  As but one example of the power of David’s research, please check out his recent very surprising results on how various types of social support (e.g., friendships, marriage, emotional support) affect aging. A teaser: If you thought social support is uniformly protective, you’d be wrong!