Who We Are

Dustin T. Duncan, ScD is associate dean for Health Equity Research and Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Duncan is an internationally recognized Social and Spatial Epidemiologist.

Dr. Duncan is a sought-after global thought leader and innovative researcher. His pioneering research broadly seeks to understand how social and contextual factors especially neighborhood characteristics influence population health. Dr. Duncan’s intersectional and health equity-based research focuses on gay, bisexual and other sexually minoritized men and transgender people of color across the African diaspora including in the U.S., Caribbean and Africa. 

Dr. Duncan’s work appears in leading public health, epidemiology, medical, geography, criminology, demography, and psychology journals. Working in collaborations with scholars across the world, Dr. Duncan has over 200 high-impact articles (>120 first or senior-authored), book chapters and books cited over 8,900 times; Dr. Duncan’s research has appeared in major media outlets including U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN. Dr. Duncan’s work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the HIV Prevention Trials Network, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Verizon Foundation, and the Aetna Foundation. 

Dr. Duncan is an award-winning leader who have received several scientific contribution, mentoring and leadership awards including from the National Academy of Medicine, the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. In 2020, Dr. Duncan proudly received the Mentor of the Year Award from Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research.  

At Columbia University, Dr. Duncan also directs the Spatial Epidemiology Lab as well as co-directs the Department of Epidemiology’s Social and Spatial Epidemiology Unit and co-directs the Health Equity Core in the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies. In addition, Dr. Duncan leads an eponymous foundation in Harlem, New York.