Earle C. Chambers, PhD, MPH

A Earle Chambers, PhD, MPH, is committed to uncovering the causes of negative health outcomes among vulnerable populations. As a 2006 New Connections Junior  Investigator, he examined the impact of household instability and poverty on obesity among urban mothers and children, and found a significant correlation between obesity and the home environment.

Chambers analyzed data from the “Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing” study to determine the relationship between obesity, household instability and area poverty in urban mothers and their children. The study showed that relative weight increased with the level of household instability. The “Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing” study was conducted in 20 U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000.

Chambers, an assistant professor in the Family and Social Medicine Department at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., is expanding his research to projects that examine the role of family dynamics, physical space within the home and access to social and material resources in the neighborhood in assessing the risk factors of obesity and obesity promoting behaviors. Chambers initially became interested in chronic disease epidemiology, specifically obesity in racial and ethnic minority populations, while a masters student at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1997.   

He earned his PhD in epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health in 2003. His doctoral work included a project in the Caribbean that examined the role of acculturation and racism in African-Caribbean populations in two different Caribbean countries. After graduation, Chambers spent the next three years in a postdoctoral fellowship at the New York Obesity and Nutrition Research Center at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, Columbia University.