Rui (Zoe) Huang
Research Interests: Population Health, Medical Sociology, Demography, Quantitative Methods, Chronic Pain
Pronouns: she/her
Education:
2020, MA, Sociology, University at Buffalo
2015, MA, Human Resource Management, University of Leeds
2014, BA, Financial Management, Wuhan University of Technology
2015, MA, Human Resource Management, University of Leeds
2014, BA, Financial Management, Wuhan University of Technology
Recent courses taught: SOC 378: Social Inequality and Health
Bio:
My research seeks to understand social drivers and consequences of chronic conditions, with a special focus on chronic pain. My projects include an analysis on the effects of chronic pain on social relationships, a macro-level examination of 50 years of scholarship on pain-related inequalities across sociodemographic groups, and establishing a framework for analyzing social determinants and consequences of pain at individual, interpersonal, and macro levels. Additionally, I explore how divergent macro-sociopolitical and cultural contexts shape health inequalities across the globe. My research reveals that pain prevalence and educational disparities in pain vary substantially across U.S. states, and that cross-state variations are a function of state-level income inequality and social cohesion. Beyond the U.S., I also study health inequalities in non-Western contexts. I demonstrated that the critical cultural meanings embedded in smoking and alcohol use in China contribute to high prevalence and attenuated social gradients in unhealthy health behaviors and health outcomes (published in SSM-Population Health). My dissertation continues my inquiries aforementioned with the life course perspective. My first paper argues that wartime trauma is a strong but overlooked predictor of ill health, particularly in Asian countries. I find that war exposures contribute to strikingly high risks of pain through “psychological scarring” process among older Vietnamese. My second paper examines whether socioeconomic deprivation leads to cumulative stress exposures throughout the life course, ultimately resulting in a higher risk of pain in later life in the U.S. My third paper studys the effects of welfare states. It explores to what extent welfare regimes affect the strengths of the association between socioeconomic adversities in childhood and later-life chronic pain.
Publications:
Huang, Rui, Yulin Yang, Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, Anna Zajacova, Zachary Zimmer and Yuhang Li. “Educational Disparities in Joint Pain within and across U.S. States: Do State Contexts Matter?” PAIN, 164, 10. https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002945
Huang, Rui, and Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk. 2022. “Health and Health Behaviors in China: Anomalies in the SES-Health Gradient?” SSM - Population Health, 17, 101069. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2022.101069
Yang, Yulin, Rui Huang, Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, Jacqueline M. Torresa. 2022. "Social Network Change after New-Onset Pain among Middle-Aged and Older European Adults." Social Science & Medicine 310:115215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115215
Yan, Ruoyu, Jun Zhang, Yabo Wang, Rui Huang. 2017. “The Application of KPI in Hospital Function Department Target Management.” China Economist 3:231-232. CNKI:SUN:JJSS.0.2017-03-115
Presentations:
Huang, Rui, Yulin Yang, Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk, Anna Zajacova, Zachary Zimmer and Yuhang Li. “Educational Disparities in Joint Pain within and across U.S. States: Do State Contexts Matter?”. Presented at the Population Association of America, New Orleans.
Huang, Rui, and Hanna Grol-Prokopczyk. “Health and Health Behaviors in China: Anomalies in the SES-Health Gradient?”. Presented at the Celebration of Academic Excellence, SUNY at Buffalo, NY.
Email: rhuang27@buffalo.edu