An Epidemiologist Embraces Her Full Truth

A self-described “street kid,” Paris “AJ” Adkins-Jackson spent her youth bussing across Los Angeles County to an elite school for the performing arts where she studied dance, trombone, and voice. “I am definitely that kid who was not supposed to ‘make it’, who ended up walking into opportunities because I believe in trying everything,” says Adkins-Jackson, a Columbia Mailman assistant professor who joined the departments of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences in 2022.

Adkins-Jackson’s high school teachers didn’t share their pupil’s commitment to bringing her whole self—in all its intersectional complexity—to the classroom and the stage. “I really took it personal that the school didn’t care about my life but wanted me to perform every day,” she says. In protest, she shirked her homework, a prerequisite for appearing on stage. The teen’s rationale was straightforward: “Y’all don’t really care about the artist, the person behind the work, so I’m not giving you my work.”

Three decades later, Adkins-Jackson says she’s more intent than ever on showing up as her whole self. “I never thought I would have a dream job, be able to attain it—I’m living that dream,” she says. “If it’s going to be taken from me, it’s while I’m living in my full truth. My work reflects who I am and the imprint I want to make on public health.”

What is your work in public health?

Adkins-Jackson: First, I document the experiences of those who are ignored by science. Second, I develop interventions to both reduce the impact of structural violence and restore the health of people. Third, when at all possible, I use art to do all of the above. Probably the most important thing on earth to me is studying how people do things, where they do them, why they do them. That’s all the juiciness of life for me. I’m only in public health to protect people so they can do all those things I love to experience and observe.

What does that currently look like?

Adkins-Jackson: My research has revealed how adverse childhood exposure to racist policies set the stage for poor cognitive, biological, and psychological health in mid- to late life, as well as how racist policies have brain health implications for generations born a decade or two after implementation. I laid out the framework for my investigation in 2023, which ultimately yielded a trilogy of studies on older adults titled in tribute to Marvin Gaye. “Hang Ups, Let Downs, Bad Breaks, Setbacks,” describes the impact of structural socioeconomic racism and resilience over time on cognitive change in midlife. “Rest of the Folks are Tired and Weary” links historical lynchings in early life to biological and cognitive health in mid-to-late life. “The Place Where Danger Waits,” links incarceration in adulthood associated with the 1994 Crime Bill to mid-to-late life cognitive function.

How are you getting the word out about those findings?

Adkins-Jackson: In 2024, in collaboration with Visage Entertainment, we released Brim, an 80-minute period drama based on my Marvin Gaye studies. I’m currently writing a musical that translates my epidemiological and anthropological research on how we as a society have come to misunderstand race in public health. Art just makes everything go down smoother.

For your master’s in cultural anthropology, you wrote a thesis on hip hop; how does your musical legacy show up in your public health research?

Adkins-Jackson: I see the music in the math, and I see the math in the music. My lab is called the Marvin Grey Matter Lab, an homage to Marvin Gaye and the grey matter of our brains. I take the lessons from Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, The Watts Prophets, Tupac Shakur, and try to see where those experiences might be common enough to affect brain health. Also, the way we do math is kind of like jazz. You can anticipate or use probabilities in a song to determine when the horn should come in, when the drums should come in. I use the rhythmic approach of jazz to also think about when a certain variable plays a part in the equation.

You earned your PhD in psychometrics at Morgan State University in just three years—what propelled you through the program?

Adkins-Jackson: I was big grown. I wasn’t 20, figuring out my life. I had lived, run a business, run a nonprofit, worked as a research associate, earned two master’s degrees, taught anthropology for over a decade. I had done so much that I was clear-headed, and I’ve been clear-headed ever since.

When speaking to your loved ones, how do you describe what psychometrics is?

Adkins-Jackson: I measure stuff—measure  behavior, ability, aptitude, and experiences as well as the likelihood that these lead to disease.

As an adjunct teaching biological anthropology at Los Angeles City College in the early 2000s, you sent your students on scavenger hunts to find skeletons you’d hidden on campus and had them choreograph the process of cellular division known as meiosis and perform those works. In 2025, Columbia Mailman honored you for innovation as a teacher. What methods have you developed for master’s level students?

Adkins-Jackson: I teach mixed methods research methods. My students say that they appreciate that there’s always a project that allows them to publish. My students desire opportunities outside of their thesis to do research and publish. And I let them do the wildest, craziest studies ever. This month I have students organizing a weekend health fair in the Bronx and a public health art gallery exhibit in Manhattan. I’m down for all of it.

Your doctoral research explored how Black women mediate the negative relationship between stress and health, a project galvanized by your best friend’s experience with breast cancer. More recently, you’ve investigated how Black and brown elders’ experience of policing during their lifetime affects cognitive decline. What’s next?

Adkins-Jackson: Right now, I’m working on what I’m calling Harambee, it’s an acronym that stands for “Health interventions that are Antiracist, Restorative, Art-based, and Multi-level, By Everyone, for Everyone.” Now that I understand Alzheimer’s disease is disproportionately distributed in certain places in the U.S., including Bronx County, NY; Baltimore City, MD; Miami-Dade County, FL; and Los Angeles County, CA, I’m developing aging-in-place health interventions for these places, and you bet art is at the center of it all.