Dr. Jason A. Douglas is an assistant professor of public health in the Department of Health Sciences within Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences. Leveraging community-based participatory research frameworks, Douglas works with community-based organizations and residents in underserved Black and Latinx communities to investigate social and environmental determinants of public health disparities.
His current research examines COVID-19-related health disparities, food and housing insecurity-related health disparities, the nexus of crime and violence and legal drug retail locations (e.g., tobacco shops, liquor stores), public park and physical activity disparities in underserved communities, and community organizing practices for advancing health and wellbeing. In his community-engaged research, Douglas has developed and adapted innovative participatory methods for public health, including structured observation and neighborhood mapping approaches for examining novel public health challenges.
Douglas completed his environmental psychology doctoral training at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, wherein he worked with children from underserved communities in New York City and forest-fringe community residents in Jamaica to examine social and environmental inequities that challenge community health and wellbeing. He then honed his participatory research practice through a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded postdoctoral research fellowship in the Psychology Applied Research Center at Loyola Marymount University, where he worked with a national cohort of community-based organizations to evaluate community organizing strategies and practices for addressing health, education, and built environment disparities in underserved communities. He extended these research practices as an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at San José State University before joining Chapman University.
