Richard Carpiano

Dr. Richard M. Carpiano is an associate professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he is also an associate member of the School of Population and Public Health, faculty associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and faculty affiliate of the Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP). He is a 2007 recipient of a Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research Scholar Award and, in 2010, was awarded a five-year New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Prior to arriving at UBC, Carpiano was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2004 to 2006.

Carpiano’s research program centers on how personal and community socioeconomic conditions impact physical and mental health and shape health disparities. Some of his current solo and collaborative projects focus on the positive and negative health consequences of neighborhood- and network-based social capital for adults and children as well as the measurement of neighborhood social environments for population health research. He has authored or co-authored research published in leading forums such as the American Journal of Public Health; American Sociological Review; Health & Place; Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health; Journal of Health and Social Behavior; Social Science & Medicine; and Sociology of Health & Illness.

Recent Publications

Link, Bruce G., Carpiano, Richard M., & Weden, Margaret M. (2013). Can Honorific Awards Give Us Clues about the Connection between Socioeconomic Status and Mortality? American Sociological Review, 78, 192-212. (link to abstract)

Polonijo AN, Carpiano RM. Social inequalities in adolescent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination: a test of fundamental cause theory. Soc Sci Med. 2013 Apr;82:115-25. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.12.020. Epub 2012 Dec 27. (PubMed abstract)

Carpiano RM, Kimbro RT. Neighborhood social capital, parenting strain, and personal mastery among female primary caregivers of children. J Health Soc Behav. 2012;53(2):232-47. doi: 10.1177/0022146512445899. (PubMed abstract)

Carpiano RM, Kelly BC, Easterbrook A, Parsons JT. Community and drug use among gay men: the role of neighborhoods and networks. J Health Soc Behav. 2011 Mar;52(1):74-90. doi: 10.1177/0022146510395026. (PubMed abstract)

Carpiano RM, Hystad PW. “Sense of community belonging” in health surveys: what social capital is it measuring? Health Place. 2011 Mar;17(2):606-17. doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.12.018. Epub 2011 Jan 11. (PubMed abstract)