Roland Thorpe

Roland J. Thorpe, Jr., PhD, MS, is a Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society, Founding Director of the Program of Men’s Health Research in the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions (HCHDS), Deputy Director of HCHDS, and Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  He was the Co-Director of the Obesity Health Disparities PRIDE Program. He is the inaugural Associate Vice Provost of Faculty Diversity.  Dr. Thorpe is a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the association of how social, behavioral, and structural determinants of health impact cognitive, functional, and physical health outcomes among African Americans with a focus on men across the adult life course.  Dr. Thorpe serves as multiple principal investigator (MPI) on several NIA funded grants and is a MPI of AIM-AHEAD with a focus on increasing the participation and engagement of the researchers and communities that are currently not apparent in AI/ML modeling and applications through mutually beneficial partnerships. He participates in several training programs designed to develop scholars across career stages with a focus on early career investigators.  He is a past recipient of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Advising, Mentoring, and Teaching Recognition Award, the inaugural annual 2018 NHLBI OHD PRIDE Roland J. Thorpe, Jr. mentoring award, recipient of the 2020 Minority Issues in Gerontology Outstanding Mentorship Award, and the 2020 JHBSPH Dean’s Award of Distinction in Faculty Mentoring.  Dr. Thorpe is also the Editor in Chief of Ethnicity & Disease, Associate Editor for Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences, and American Journal of Men’s Health.

Dr. Thorpe earned a bachelor’s in theoretical mathematics from Florida A&M University, a master’s in statistics, a Ph.D. in clinical epidemiology with a graduate minor in gerontology from Purdue University, and received postdoctoral training in health disparities and gerontology from the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.