Emily Parker, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a faculty fellow at the Carolina Population Center. She is also a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Heldrich Center. She was formerly an Assistant Professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and a NIA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan in the Population Studies Center. Dr. Parker received her Ph.D. in Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University.

Dr. Parker’s primary research interests are in how public policy and community context matter to the longstanding link between health and poverty. The main areas of her scholarship examine the health care safety net—specifically the Community Health Center program and Medicaid—as well as federal place-based policies, which target areas of concentrated disadvantage. She also studies the demographic connections between family, gender, race/ethnicity, and public policy. Her research has been published in outlets such as Social Science & Medicine, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of Marriage and Family, and Housing Policy Debate, and her work has been recognized with awards from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management as well as the American Sociological Association.